


Falling in Love in October

by languageintostillair



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Office, Alternate Universe - Police, Alternate Universe - Professors, Alternate Universe - Retail, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Alternate Universe - Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) Fusion, Alternate Universe - X-Files Fusion, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, F/M, Fluff and Crack, Humor, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2020-11-09 05:57:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 54,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20848634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/languageintostillair/pseuds/languageintostillair
Summary: A series of JB ficlets written in response to theFictober 2019dialogue prompts. One story for each day in October in order of the listed prompts.





	1. “It will be fun, trust me.” (Modern AU)

“It’ll be fun, Jaime. Trust me.”

Jaime Lannister can’t believe his ears. He can’t believe _Brienne Tarth_ had just said those very words to _him_. He’d said the same words to _her_ so many times before. “It’ll be fun, Brienne. Trust me.” She always said the same thing in response: “I’ll never trust you, Jaime Lannister.” She’d agree to it, anyway.

This is all wrong. _He’s_ the fun one._ He’s_ the one who always wants to try new things. She’s the one who moans and groans and talks about how much work she has to do and how she’d much rather stay at home with a good book. Brienne only accompanies him because she knows she’s the only person in his life approaching a friend, and she’s the only one who never particularly cared that he has only one hand, even back when they weren’t friends at all.

But all the new things Jaime Lannister wants to try, that’s all city stuff. King’s Landing stuff. Newly opened molecular gastronomy restaurants and that one speakeasy that you had to enter via a lift that otherwise looked like a phone booth. Arthouse movies, especially the ones with terrible reviews. A play with seats for only twenty people per show, that you could only enter if you knocked on a nondescript door on some unnamed street in Flea Bottom and gave them a password. Oh, there was that one time they went for a cooking class together, but the teacher had such a thick Essosi accent that they couldn’t understand half his instructions and made nothing edible.

King’s Landing stuff. It was nothing compared to _jumping off a cliff into open water_.

Brienne Tarth is just standing there, far too near the edge. And she’s holding out her hand to him, expecting him to just take it and jump off too. To _trust _her.

Who is this woman? She brings him with her to Tarth, and suddenly she’s running rampant and wild as if her family still owns the whole island. Dashing barefoot through the meadows, swimming too far out to sea, climbing rocks with no gear or anything. _That_ kind of stuff. And, she made him leave his prosthetic back at her father’s house all day, every day. (Okay, perhaps he doesn’t mind that part so much.)

In a past life, in another life, if he had spent his childhood by the waters and the forests surrounding the Lannisters’ ancestral home of Casterly Rock, _maybe_ he’d be more comfortable with all of this. But he’d spent his life in King’s Landing, and in three different boarding schools, and in an office with a great view of—more offices.

Jaime Lannister doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want Brienne Tarth to die. At first, he’d thought her too tall, too ugly, too mannish, too serious, too young, too innocent, too honest, too kind, too good for the likes of him. Too, too, too, too, too. Until the toos weren’t toos anymore. They were just Brienne. And Just-Brienne wants to jump off a cliff into open water.

He likes Brienne Tarth. He likes her enormously. He is planning to tell her he likes her enormously _tonight_. They can’t die before _tonight_.

But Jaime would jump off a cliff for Brienne, wouldn’t he? Sometimes it feels as if he really would, if he _really_ had to.

Fuck it. He’ll tell her he likes her enormously on the way down. That way she’ll know before they both die, at least. He might even tell her that he loves her. It’s probably too soon—he’s only kissed her one time, last month, when they were both quite drunk from that Dornish vineyard tour, and they hadn’t spoken of it again. But then she had invited him to Tarth, so he _was_ thinking that maybe she likes him too, and doesn’t just pity him.

Fine. He’ll tell her that he loves her. They’re going to die jumping off this cliff, anyway, so he can die with that declaration off his chest, and she can die in a state of panic at said declaration. Serves her right.

So he takes her hand, and they jump.


	2. “Just follow me. I know the area.” (Post-Canon)

She should have let the Others kill him.

If Brienne of Tarth had let the Others kill Jaime Lannister, she would not be in this predicament.

It would have been so easy. She had to save him so many times on the battlefield. If she had foreseen this happening, she could have just—_not_ saved him, one of those times.

“Just follow me. I know the area,” he had said. But just because he led the Lannister armies through the Riverlands does _not_ mean he truly knows every corner and crevice in the region, not in the way he should, for _this_ purpose. The reason why they have been walking in this thrice-damned forest for the _whole day_.

Oh look, it’s that tree again. She is very sure she’s seen that tree before. It looks like all the others, but she is very sure she’s seen it before. But if she says, “Jaime, it’s that tree again,” he will say, “It’s a different tree, wench. I know where I’m going.”

You know what else would have prevented them from being in this predicament in the first place? If he had not been seized by a bout of self-loathing and had their marriage annulled. “I am a hateful man, Brienne,” and all that nonsense. If he was such a hateful man, he wouldn’t have lost his hand for her, fought a bear for her. He wouldn’t have dragged her, half-dead, all the way to the Quiet Isle. He wouldn’t have married her just so he could stay by her side while she healed.

They had not consummated the marriage before the annulment, of course. But she had given him her maidenhead just weeks later. Because he had seduced her. With knighthood. He had knighted her, and then she had let him fuck her, because he is also very beautiful and she is _weak_. And now here she is. Weak and walking in circles with Jaime ‘I know where I’m going’ Lannister.

Her knighthood is useless now, and so is his. There is no place for them in this new world order. They serve no king, or queen; no lord, or lady; no noble houses, not even their own. They are barely even hedge knights, for there is no cause for which they can offer their services, no one to employ them for those causes. They use their swords only to spar with each other. A waste of Valyrian steel.

But none of this means Jaime Lannister gets to wander about the Riverlands with her in tow, looking for a sept that he claims exists. So he can marry her. Again. Which he would _not_ have to do if the first one had _not_ been annulled, at _his_ behest.

There is no sept. There is no village to go with the sept. There is no inn to go with the village to go with the sept. Oh, she really wants an inn right now. Is it getting dark? They set off in the morning, for Seven’s sake. “It’s an hour’s walk away, at most.” No, it is not. She wants an inn, and she wants a bed. She’s gone much longer without one, but she’s angry at Jaime and she wants a comfortable bed. She can fuck him in that comfortable bed, at least, if she’s in the mood. Sometimes it feels better when she’s angry at him. And it’ll also feel better to fuck him in that comfortable bed rather than on the ground in this neverending forest.

“There it is, I see it! I’ll make a wife of you yet, wench.”

This is not the first time today that Jaime has said those words. She palms the pommel of Oathkeeper, thinks she might jab the lion’s head in some sensitive places on Jaime’s body if he keeps this up. But she looks through the trees, and maybe, _maybe_ Brienne sees the moss-covered brick of a small building that _could_ be a sept. Thank the Gods.

Now, to find that inn.


	3. “Now? Now you listen to me?” (Modern AU)

For the first time in a long time, Jaime’s work schedule is clear for the afternoon. This was a fact, as of twenty minutes ago. It was what he had been looking forward to all morning. He would have been able to clear some of his backlog, or play some Solitaire on his computer, or daydream about his date with Brienne tonight. Or rather, about what he’s planning for_ after_ the date.

Then, twenty minutes ago, Tywin Lannister decided to saddle his eldest son with a lunch meeting. With one of their most important clients. Who really, really, really likes to drone on, and on, and on. 

This meeting would most definitely not be concluded within the socially acceptable temporal parameters of ‘lunch’.

Jaime wants to sigh, but he has to sigh about this _inwardly_, because right now he is leading this client down the corridor to his office, and he has to plaster his most charming grin on his face. This client always has three subordinates with him, but Jaime can never figure out why. They always spend meetings furiously taking notes, but they’ve never actually contributed anything of substance to discussions. Come to think of it, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen the same three subordinates twice. Maybe the man is under the false assumption that they make him look powerful, regardless of who they actually are.

Jaime wants to sigh again, and so he grins even wider instead. He would call it a Lannister grin, but his father is also a Lannister, and his father never grins. His father is very serious, and his father gave him an office with very serious, very heavy, very wooden doors. He is standing in front of those doors right now, and he knows what lies on the other side is a very long meeting with one of their most important clients and his three subordinates whose only function is to deplete the amount of oxygen in their general vicinity.

For some reason, his assistant Peck, who sits at a desk right outside those doors, is giving him a weird look. A weird, shocked, maybe even terrified look. He looks like he wants to tell Jaime something very important, but can’t quite figure out how to say it. Well, Jaime has no time for deciphering weird looks. The sooner he starts the meeting, the sooner it’ll be over.

On a hunch, though, Jaime opens one of his office doors a crack, rather than flinging both open like he usually does with the kind of abandon that he hopes inspires confidence in his clients. The chair in front of his desk is turning towards him slowly, and then he sees a bare foot, a bare calf, a bare thigh—

Jaime slams the door closed. He turns around and grins, again.

“Excuse me for a moment, gentlemen. Peck, will you please get them some coffee? Tea? Whisky?” _Whisky would be good. He needs some whisky right now._ “And order some lunch in for us, while you’re at it. Thank you.”

Then, Jaime opens one of those very serious, very heavy, very wooden doors again, just wide enough so he can slip in. He closes it, and locks the door. He lets out every single sigh he’s been holding in for the past twenty minutes.

“_What in the seven bloody hells do you think you’re doing, Brienne?_”

At most other times, he would very much appreciate having a fully naked Brienne in his office. But now—now is not one of those times. _Gods_, she is a vision in that chair, all long arms and longer legs. Jaime doesn’t just want to sigh. He wants to scream, preferably in pleasure, but that is not an option that is available to him right now.

“You said you wanted me to be more spontaneous!” she snaps back.

He had. He had also said it as a _joke_. Brienne is so stoic—it took him years to figure out that he might have a chance with her—and so stubborn—it took another few months for her to agree to go out with him—that he didn’t think she’d actually take him seriously. Then again, she takes almost everything seriously.

“Now? _Now_ you listen to me? I have a very important client standing right outside those doors, and he is under the impression that we will be having a lunch meeting in here, _without_ the presence of a naked woman.”

“_Fuck!_” She jumps out of the chair, and retrieves her bag from underneath his desk.“I thought I had Peck clear your schedule for the afternoon!” she says in a panic, while throwing on her bra. Of course. This is Brienne. Her spontaneity had to be _planned_. But no matter how much planning Brienne does, those plans can always be easily overridden by one Tywin Lannister.

“My father doesn’t _care_ about my schedule,” he says, walking towards her. “While I would very much prefer to spend my time in this office with you, _without _any clothes on, unfortunately I have to entertain four very boring men, and they won’t take kindly to either of us being naked.”

Brienne is fully dressed by now, but—it does not look good. At some point in this whole mess her clothes had become all rumpled, and she _cannot_ walk out of his office looking like this. She’s noticed it too, because she’s looking down at herself, exasperated. “I did _not_ think I was going to have to walk out of this room during office hours.” She lifts a brown paper bag and bottle of wine out of her bag. “I brought refreshments,” she mumbles, disappointed.

Jaime sighs, again. “I’m sorry this got ruined,” he tells her—_he is truly, truly, truly sorry_—as he runs his hand up and down her arm. “And you’re going to hate me, but you’ll need to hide in the bathroom.” Brienne nods her head in resignation, and he stands on his tiptoes to kiss her forehead in apology. This is an odd moment for an even odder emotion, but Jaime finds himself feeling grateful to his father. Even though he considers Tywin Lannister responsible for this whole debacle, at least he had the foresight to design offices for his children that have attached private bathrooms. The man does not believe that lions should relieve themselves in the presence of sheep.

He’s about to lock Brienne in his bathroom—which sounds… okay, it’s as bad as it sounds—when she looks at him sadly with those blue eyes of hers. Alright, one kiss won’t hurt, would it? Not at this point. As he pushes her into the wall, his lips locked with hers, he swears to himself: 

I, Jaime Lannister, will do all that is humanly possible to make sure this meeting will be concluded within the socially acceptable temporal parameters of ‘lunch’.


	4. “I know you didn’t ask for this.” (Post-Canon)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one should probably be rated a very light M for mentions of sexual content.

“I know you didn’t ask for this.”

Brienne stares at Jaime. She hopes he can tell that she’s staring daggers at him. Daggers, and shortswords, and battle-axes, and spears, and arakhs, and Valyrian steel blades. She is staring _Oathkeepers_ at him. Oh, Brienne doesn’t want any of these to kill her husband. Maybe. But she is currently imagining Jaime backed against the wall, with every single one of these weapons suspended in the air around him, each one hovering as close as possible to his body without actually touching him. Oathkeeper is positioned right at his groin.

“No,” she says, coldly, “I did not.”

The “this” that she absolutely did not ask for is her_ sixth_ child with Jaime Lannister.

“I’m sorry…?” Jaime offers.

“Are you,” she replies, her biting tone erasing any semblance of a query from those two words. He’s been sorry since she carried their fourth child, and now she’s on their _sixth._ He might have felt sorry since their third child if the second and third had not been twins. 

If she could be on a permanent diet of moon tea, she would, but the maester at Evenfall Hall had advised her not to drink it too often. Unfortunately, the frequency with which she is permitted to drink moon tea is definitely _not_ proportionate to the frequency with which she and Jaime—

Well. Here they are again. Her moon’s blood has not come for two, three months. She is all too aware of what that means, even without seeing the maester. It is, after all, her _sixth child_.

Brienne knows Jaime is not to blame; or rather, not the only one. She too, possessed by some demon, had asked him to spill in her many times before. She might even have pleaded with him to do so, some of those times. She knows this, and she is trying very hard to hold onto this knowledge. But she is also not looking forward to being with child for another seven months, and the agony of the birth, and the sleepless nights. Brienne has always chosen to raise their children by her own hand and Jaime’s—her duties as the Evenstar notwithstanding—but she is very tempted, for this _sixth _child, to finally make full and thorough use of the many maids and servants at her disposal.

Before all of that, however, Brienne desperately needs someone to blame. Someone else other than herself, who has to _suffer_ through this. And Jaime is standing _right there_. He will not be carrying a child in his belly for the next seven months, or expelling this child from a cunt he does not have at the end of those seven months. Most conveniently, he already has an imaginary Oathkeeper pointed at his groin.

So, Brienne chooses to respond to the situation in the most dignified way that she can:

“I hate you.”

Jaime looks amused now. She hates him even more for this.

“You do not,” he says, smiling. He does not get to _smile._ Smiling is for husbands who don’t beget multiple children in quick succession on their poor wives.

“I do. I hate you and your stupid cock. Why should _I _have to be responsible for drinking moon tea? Let’s just cut the damn thing off. You do well enough with your mouth.”

“My mouth will be a poor substitute, skilled as I am.” He might have thrust his hips slightly at that statement, the insolent bastard. Where is the real Oathkeeper? She’ll cut his cock off herself, right now. A Valyrian steel castration, more than he deserves. “Surely you will not deprive a poor cripple of yet another body part?” Jaime continues, oblivious to the plans forming in her head. “A body part he lost while he was supposed to be under _your_ protection?” 

He is waving his stump at her now. She should never have encouraged him to stop wearing his golden hand. Brienne will cut his cock off and dip it in gold and strap that to his wrist instead. At least if he fucks her with that she will not find herself with child.

“My lady wife.” Jaime’s arms are around her now, but her own arms are stiff by her side. “My wench. Do you not want this babe?”

“It’s not that I do not want the child, _my lord husband_.” Brienne sighs. “It’s everything in between.”

“I will be at your beck and call.” He kisses her scarred cheek. “I will do everything in my power to care for you in these most arduous months,” he pronounces dramatically.

“You said the same words last time, my lord husband, and the time before last,” Brienne mumbles, unimpressed.

“And did I not fulfil that promise?”

He did, but she will not give him the satisfaction of admitting it. “You also infuriated me constantly with all your fussing. You wouldn’t give me a moment’s peace.”

“How would I love you,” Jaime says, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, “or you me, if we didn’t infuriate each other?” 

She hates her husband. She hates him even more when he’s right.

“I hate you,” Brienne repeats, petulantly. 

“I know,” Jaime replies. He knows, by now, that when she says those words, she usually means the opposite. “And I will redeem myself of that hatred by being at your beck and call starting right now.”

Jaime is moving his lips closer and closer to hers. It seems he has a very narrow definition of ‘being at her beck and call’. She rewards this by smacking her palm right between his brows.

“Ow! Why in all of the seven hells did you do that, wench?”

“You do not get to kiss me.”

“_Why not?_” he gripes. 

“Because it is my will.” She pushes her finger into his chest. “And for the next seven or so months you are to act only according to my will. It is only fair.”

“This is by the decree of the Lady Evenstar?”

“It is,” she states, and turns away.

“Then as her loyal subject, I must obey.” He hooks his hand around her elbow and pulls her back into his arms. “But are you not the same Lady Evenstar who is renowned through the Stormlands for the generosity with which you treat your people?” He is stroking his stump down her spine in exactly the way he knows she likes, damn him. “Will you not afford that same generosity to your husband?”

“I will not.” She is trying to stay strong in spite of his ministrations. “For I am also the Lady Evenstar who is renowned for being almost always with child, because of her incorrigible husband of the disgraced House Lannister.”

And that was the wrong thing to say, because Jaime is now smirking with, with _victory_. He is also trying to kiss her _again_—this is how it _always _starts—and—and—

Fine. She will let him. 

It will be seven more months, in any case, before she has to worry about a seventh child.


	5. “I might just kiss you.” (College AU)

“We’re done. We’re finally done.” Jaime Lannister falls backwards and splays himself on the floor of Brienne’s dorm room. “Wench, we’ve done it,” he says, turning to look at her.

Brienne feels so delirious that she doesn’t even correct him with her usual “My name is _Brienne_.” Jaime Lannister has been calling her ‘wench’ ever since they were first paired for this semester-long assignment for their Medieval Studies class—an assignment she thought she would have to do entirely on her own, lazy as she assumed Jaime Lannister must be. (She only calls him ‘Jaime Lannister’, in full, in retaliation for ‘wench’.) Besides, they could barely hold a civil conversation with each other at the start.

But, as it turns out, he took this class for a reason. Brienne won’t admit it out loud, but Jaime Lannister might actually be more knowledgeable and more enthusiastic about medieval battle tactics than she is, though he hadn’t been too keen on the other topics covered in the class. All she needed to do was figure out how to channel his passion into actual labour, which she’s been doing at the expense of her own sleep. Jaime Lannister is not lazy, Brienne realises, but he is also a night owl. She thought it would be easier for _her _to stay up at night than to force _him_ to wake up in the mornings, even though that’s when she’s usually most productive. Consequently, they’ve been spending every night for the past two weeks either in the school library or spread out on the floor of her room, books and notes and laptops and all, as they are now.

It’s turned her sleep schedule upside down, but they’re _done. _Brienne feels delirious both from the lack of sleep, and the fact that they not only finished this assignment, but also did so to a standard that is more than satisfactory to her.

“I think we’ve done it, Jaime Lannister,” Brienne laughs. “I’m so happy, I might just kiss you.”

_Oh fuck. _

_Ohfuckohfuckohfuck. _

She is most definitely delirious. What in the world possessed her to say _that_? Why does she ever say words out loud? She should never speak again. She should never have spoken a single word in her entire life. That would have prevented this very moment from existing. Now she’s opened her big mouth—_lips—Jaime Lannister’s lips—her lips on Jaime Lannister’s lips—NO! Stop it, brain! Bad!_

“What did you just say?”

Jaime Lannister is looking at her with a twinkle in his eye, which he’s been doing far too often these past two weeks. _No. This is a no-twinkle zone. Twinkling is banned in this room, especially for green-eyed boys with hair too golden and luscious for their own good. There will be no twinkling, and definitely no kissing._

“Nothing!” Brienne spits out. _Fuck._ That was probably worse than admitting what she had actually said. If she had just admitted it, she could have played it off as a joke, like she imagines normal people must do. Cool people. But she is not normal people, or cool people. She is awkward and ungainly Brienne. And she has just told Jaime Lannister, who is decidedly not awkward and not ungainly, that she might kiss him.

“It sounds like you said you might just kiss me, Brienne Tarth.”

“I—I did not!” _Stop denying it, you idiot!_ But she can’t. It’s like some part of her wants it all to get much, much worse.

“I’m pretty sure you did.” Jaime Lannister has sat back up again, and he’s leaning very close to her with his broadest grin. _Of course. He must think it’s all a joke. The tall and ugly girl wanting to kiss the most good-looking, lusted-after boy in their whole class. In the whole school._

“Fine, I said it! It was just—an expression!” _Yes, that’s exactly what it was, Brienne. It’s not like you’ve been thinking about it all the time for the past two weeks._

“An expression of… wanting to kiss me?” he asks, expectantly. _Wait, expectantly? That can't be right._

“_No!_” _Yes. Fuck._

“So you _don’t _want to kiss me.”

_Say no, Brienne. Just say no and it will all be over. You can let this blow over the way you’ve always let everything blow over._

But Brienne doesn’t say no. She says nothing. She refuses to look at Jaime Lannister. The very same Jaime Lannister who knows far more about medieval battle tactics than she initially surmised, which she found very annoying and very attractive at the same time. She is looking at the space under her bed instead. That space under her bed is very appealing. She wants to crawl into that space and stay there for the rest of her life.

“You said you _might_ just kiss me,” Jaime Lannister says, all low and—seductive? _Is that what a seductive voice sounds like?_ She can’t be sure, since she’s never been on the receiving end of a seductive voice. “What will it take to turn that _might_, into a _will_?”

She inches a little closer to the space under her bed. “... What?”

Jaime Lannister shortens the distance she’s just opened up between them. “It’s a simple question, wench.”

_No, it isn’t simple at all, Jaime Lannister._

“It’s an expression,” she says again, lamely.

“Okay then. Let’s say, in theory, that I take that expression seriously.” She can feel his breath on her skin, even though she’s leaning so far back to avoid touching him that she might fall over if he comes any closer. “What will it take to turn that _might_, into a _will_, Brienne Tarth?”

“Um,” she croaks. As if this couldn't get any worse, she just _croaked_ in response to what she _thinks _is a seductive voice. Brienne clears her throat. “In theory,” she echoes, “maybe if I—I knew that the kiss wasn’t… unwanted. Then… the _might_ c-could turn into a _will_.” _Great. A sudden onset stammer in addition to the croaking._

“Hmm. Should we test that theory?”

“Huh?” she croaks. Again.

“As far as I’m concerned, Brienne,” Jaime says. _Did his seductive voice just crack a little?_ “All evidence points to the theory being sound.”

“Oh. R-really?”

_What the fuck is happening?_

“Yes," Jaime replies. “Really.”

_This can’t be happening. _

“Are… are you sure?”

Brienne almost jumps out of her skin when Jaime grabs her by the shoulders.

“Oh, seven hells, Brienne!” he groans. “Just kiss me already!”

Something quite wonderful happens in the seconds, minutes, and possibly hours after those words leave Jaime Lannister’s lips. Lips that Brienne has been wanting to kiss for the past two weeks.

She discovers that Jaime Lannister is right.

The theory is, indeed, _very_ sound.


	6. “Yes, I’m aware. Your point?” (Roommates AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this a bit early, but I need to not obsess over writing fic tomorrow, so I wanted to get this one out of the way.

Jaime flops himself down on the couch beside Brienne, who is currently nose deep in a book. Knowing Brienne, it is probably a very boring book. He doesn’t care how boring the book is, however. If she’s reading one, it means she’s wearing her glasses (even though she doesn’t _really_ need to). He likes her glasses. The frames are blue, and they go well with her eyes. They make her look—

Jaime has a lot of adjectives that he could use to complete that sentence. All of them are complimentary, in his opinion. But not all of them are appropriate. Brienne will accept none of them, even the appropriate ones.

Anyway, he didn’t flop himself down on the couch beside her to appreciate her glasses. He has other things on the agenda. One thing.

“Brienne,” he coos.

“Jaime,” she acknowledges. Her eyes do not leave her book.

“What are you reading?”

She flips a page. “Something you will probably think is very boring.”

He shifts closer to her. Brienne senses this, and tries to move further away. Too bad she’s already nestled into the corner of the couch.

“Are you aware that it’s your nameday tomorrow, Brienne?”

She looks up at him, finally. “Yes, of course I’m aware, Jaime. How are _you _aware?”

“That’s a secret,” he says, smugly.

Brienne looks back down to her book. “Sansa and Margaery told you.”

“Okay then,” Jaime pouts. “It’s not a secret.” At least she can’t possibly know how many nudges and winks her two friends were throwing his way when they shared this fact with him. He had to witness some very bizarre choreography that day.

“Anyway.” Brienne flips another page. She’s faking. She can’t actually be reading while having this conversation. “Your point?”

“Do you… want to do something? For your nameday? With me?” When he rehearsed this, it was merely one simple question. He has just broken that one simple question down into three pointless questions.

Brienne recoils, just a little—the prospect of celebrating her nameday with him can’t be _that_ off-putting, surely. But she is growing faintly pink, and her eyes remain fixed firmly on the page she is most definitely _not_ reading. “Why?” she asks, as if he had just suggested the strangest thing in the world.

“Well, it’s your first nameday since we moved in together.”

Brienne looks up again at that, and narrows her eyes. “We did not _move in together_, since I was _already here_ when you moved into my spare room.” She is saying all this far too adamantly. “We’re _roommates_, Jaime. Do you _have_ to make it sound so… romantic?”

_Roommates_. They were _friends_, now, at the very least, though they had some bumps in the road early on. Yet it seems they’ve reached this platonic impasse, despite Jaime’s most romantic intentions over the last couple of months. Admittedly, he is not very good at making those romantic intentions known. It certainly doesn’t help that Brienne keeps deliberately ignoring his attempts to make them known by doing things like reading very boring books while he’s trying to ask her out. But his intentions are _definitely_ romantic. Hopefully, this platonic impasse will only last for a short while longer.

“You called it romantic, not me,” Jaime deflects, stupidly.

Okay, maybe the impasse might stay in place for longer than he had hoped. He is really not very good at this. Brienne is now blushing the blush she always blushes when she desperately wants to change the subject, and she does.

“I’ve done the same thing every nameday for the last five years, Jaime. I have lunch with Sansa and Margaery at a fancy restaurant.” Jaime knows this. Sansa and Margaery told him so. “Then I come home after work and make myself a very unfancy but very comforting dinner. After that, I curl up on the couch, and watch my favourite movie _alone_, so I can cry without anyone judging me.”

At that, Brienne’s mouth snaps shut. Oh, she revealed _too much_, in her desperate effort to skirt around that whole ‘romantic’ comment. But Jaime _doesn’t_ want to skirt around it, inept as he is.

“I’ll watch that movie with you,” he offers.

“Did you not just hear me?” she scoffs. “I want to watch it _alone_.”

“But you have a roommate now,” Jaime retorts, infused with a tiny bit of a whine. “Who has no plans for tomorrow evening. Are you going to lock me out of the house, or lock me in my room, you cruel woman?”

Great. He just called her a _cruel woman_. It’s not the first time he’s done that, or the hundredth. But he realises, too late, that it’s not the best idea to say such things to the woman you’re trying to ask out on a date. Which has now been downgraded to watching a movie with her on her couch. On her nameday, no less.

“I… I can’t do that, I suppose,” Brienne mumbles, almost to herself. “This is your home as much as mine.”

Oh. She says this like she’s considering his offer.

Jaime, the same Jaime who is not very good at making his romantic intentions known, might have stumbled onto something here. He’s done it by appealing to her _goodness_. Her _principles_. Her _roommate code of conduct._

“I promise I won’t judge you for crying.” He knows, at least, not to push the whole ‘cruel woman’ thing too far. He’s not _that_ terrible. “In fact, you might discover that I can be a bit of a crier too. Ask my brother, he’ll give you all the embarrassing details.”

“Somehow, I don’t doubt that at all,” Brienne laughs. Alright, this is good. She doesn’t laugh often in his presence, even after they had progressed from _roommates_ to _friends_.

“So… you’ll let me join you?” he asks again.

“It’s an old movie,” she says, sheepishly. “I think you’ll find it very boring, just like all my books.” Just like the book she’s finally stopped pretending to read.

“Then I’ll fall asleep on the couch, and you’ll still get to cry without any judgment from me.”

She laughs again. Jaime might accidentally be very good at this now.

“Fine,” Brienne concedes. “You can watch the movie with me. But _you_ buy the ice cream.”

They have the same favourite ice cream, Jaime remembers. Their love is practically written in the stars. But he doesn’t say that, of course. He just says, “Not a problem.”

Later, Jaime considers the wisdom of buying more than just ice cream. But knowing Brienne—and he _does_ know her, despite his romantic ineptitude—she’d probably balk at any other gifts. Especially since he’d probably make the mistake of getting something far too exorbitant for her tastes. Then he’d be right back where he started before this conversation.

Well. Her favourite movie, and their favourite ice cream, on her nameday. It’s a start, Jaime thinks.

A start is good enough for now.


	7. “No, and that’s final.” (Modern AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is most definitely not 1,000 words. It started out as a crack!ficlet about JB adopting a cat, and then became… something else very different from the first six stories in this series, and maybe a bit more in the style of my multi-chapter fic.
> 
> I don’t want to add these characters to the tags at this point in this project, but I briefly mention Tywin, Tyrion, Cersei, Joffrey, Myrcella, Tommen, and Robert in this story. And yes, twincest happened, all the kids are Jaime’s. But he is very much in a relationship with Brienne in this story, so I hope you’ll enjoy it.
> 
> By the way, I did post Chapters 5 and 6 in the same day, so you might have missed either one of them.
> 
> Oh, I'm on [Tumblr](http://shipping-receiving.tumblr.com/), and I'm posting there too if you'd rather follow this series there.

“Please.”

“No.”

“Please_._”

“No.”

“_Please_, Jaime.”

“_No_, Brienne.”

“I promise I’ll do that thing you like, as often as you want.”

“You like it too, and you already do it as often as I want.”

“It’s still honest work!”

“And the answer is still no. In any case, I no longer trust any of your promises.”

“_Why not?_”

“You said we were just coming here to volunteer for the day. _It’ll be a good distraction, Jaime, from everything that’s going on_, you said. You promised we weren’t going to leave this shelter with a cat. _All. Lies_.”

“Those things were true when I said them!” Brienne snuggles the cat in her arms. “But this one has been stuck here for _so long_, Jaime. Look at it. It looks _so sad_.”

Jaime does look at it, and it does not look sad. It looks extremely grumpy and fed up with this whole situation. It might even be trying to escape from Brienne, though it’s no match for her strength. Do cats even come in that colour? Or shape? Or _size_? It looks like an average-sized cat in Brienne’s arms. And Brienne is not average-sized.

“Maybe it’s been here for so long because it barely even looks like a cat. People probably thought it was a mistake.”

Brienne glares at him. “Jaime! Don’t be mean!”

“It’s not as if it can understand what I’m saying!”

“The first time we met, you said I barely looked like a woman. And look where we are now.”

_Oh no, she did not just—_ “You do _not_ get to pull that card just so you can adopt a cat. I have more than redeemed myself for that comment.”

This must be one of the strangest arguments he’s ever had with Brienne. And that’s counting the ones they had before they were even friends, let alone… boyfriend-and-girlfriend? Lovers? Partners? _Life_ partners? They had never really talked about labels. At first, they had hated each other. And then they didn’t. And then they were spending more and more time together, besides that one month—never mind, he doesn’t want to think about that. And then it was kind of like they were dating, maybe? And then she was barely sleeping in her own bed, at her own apartment. One day, he asked her to move in with him. She thought about it for the next month, then broke her lease. And after all of _that_, there’s been all the… the _everything-that’s-going-on_.

Jaime would never regret asking her to move in with him in the first place, but now she wants this ‘cat’ to move in with them too, and that had _never_ been on the table. Brienne likes cats, he knows, but he thought it was at the level of petting stray cats on the street, and feeding them a treat if she happens to have some on her. She never said anything about owning one until now, and the one she falls in love with is _this_. This… _‘cat’_. It is not only a very strange ‘cat’, it is also a very furry ‘cat’, and he doesn’t want its fur all over his very expensive furniture.

In addition to that crucial point, Lannisters _don’t have pets._ They just… don’t. He wonders what his father would think of all of this, if his father were still alive. Tyrion, he knows, won’t be able to stop laughing. “Even if I could believe you enjoying the company of a non-human life form, Jaime, _that_ looks _nothing_ like a cat,” his brother will say, upon seeing the beast. Cersei would—

Well, best not to think about his sister. She’s part of the reason Brienne dragged him to the shelter in the first place. _A good distraction_, Jaime scoffs in his own head. _I am the victim of a con._

“_Come on_, Jaime,” Brienne pleads again, and widens her blue eyes at him in _exactly_ the way she knows he can’t resist. “I swear, I’ll do all the work. Feed him—” _oh, it’s a ‘him’ now, not just an ‘it’_— “change his litter, take him to the vet, everything. I’ll carry a lint roller on me at all times. I’ll carry _two_ lint rollers. You won’t even have to lift a finger.”

“No, Brienne, and that’s final.”

It was not final.

Jaime found, once again, that he could never be entirely immune to Brienne’s inexplicable charms. He doesn’t even know if _charms_ is the right word for it. She just manages to make him feel so _heartless_ and—he thinks the right word might be _dishonourable_, even in this day and age—when he doesn’t go along with what she wants. What she wants, in fairness, is usually something _honourable_, like giving a ‘cat’ a good home.

In his defence, she did do the whole… _eye thing._ When they had first met, she walked around like she wanted to fold her body into herself. Now she’s learned to maximise her best assets. She has an _eye thing_, and it is immensely persuasive.

Jaime did, however, manage to wrangle naming privileges from Brienne. And so Jaime dubbed the beast ‘Bear’, much to her chagrin, even though she had to concede that Bear _does_ look more like a miniature grizzly than his own species. Jaime did also offer the alternative name of “Cat”, on the condition that they include the quotation marks on any paperwork, _and_ do the stipulated air quotes every time they refer to the animal by name. Brienne refused immediately. _You can’t give him a name with _punctuation_, Jaime_, she groaned. _Alright then. Bear it is, _he responded, triumphantly.

Bear is curled up in Jaime’s lap right now, purring away. _Gods, it’s really much uglier in daylight._ It’s been three months and he still thinks so. But the damn thing loves him. Oh, Bear shows Brienne some cursory devotion when he needs to. He’ll rub against her calf, ask her for the food and treats he knows she’ll give him. But if Bear has to choose between both of their laps, he always chooses Jaime’s. Jaime is even starting to think that Bear only _tries_ to scratch his very expensive furniture because he knows Jaime will pick him up immediately. And then Bear holds on to Jaime for dear life, and refuses to let go. If Jaime manages to get him off, he goes right for the couch, claws at the ready, until Jaime grabs him again, and gets swindled into another cuddle. What was all that crap about cats being antisocial? He’s got himself one manipulative, overly-affectionate brute.

Nonetheless, Jaime has to be grateful to Bear for one thing: ever since they got him, it’s gone some way to mend the rift between him and his niece and nephew—his _children_. It was a rift that had formed after they had discovered, in the process of Cersei’s divorce from Robert, that _Jaime _was their biological father (how they managed to keep _that _out of the papers was some kind of miracle).

Of course, Bear had no impact on his relationship with their eldest. Joffrey is a lost cause, off wreaking havoc at some university to which Cersei must have donated a generous amount, given that the boy has neither the brains nor the discipline to get accepted legitimately. Jaime doesn’t want to be a father to Joffrey, quite frankly. He is the worst parts of Cersei and Robert combined, even if his blood is all Lannister.

But Jaime _does_ care about his relationship with Myrcella and Tommen, which had been tender, if distant, before the paternity tests, and had taken an understandable turn for the worse after. And that was made considerably more painful by the fact that since the divorce, Cersei—whether out of instability, or nonchalance, or just being _Cersei_—has taken to leaving Myrcella and Tommen with him for extended periods. Days at a time, even, and going off to do Gods-knows-what. Thankfully, Jaime has an extra bedroom and a comfortable pull-out couch in his home office, which is a room he barely uses anyway. Plus, his apartment isn’t too far from either of their schools.

And Brienne has been a saint about it all, of course. Even though Cersei often couldn’t decide which was more vexing to her—Brienne’s presence in Jaime’s life, or Myrcella and Tommen’s presence in her own.

Still, the first few times the children had stayed with their uncle-turned-father were… trying. At least, it had been that way with Myrcella, who seemed to fluctuate between sullen and irate, all her negativity directed at him, at her mother, at Robert, at the world in general, and even on rare occasions at Brienne. Tommen just seemed unsure as to what to do, and took to following his sister’s example, in terms of the sullenness, if not the irateness.

In the era of Bear, though, things seem to be looking up. Tommen was beyond excited when he found out that Jaime finally has the cat that Cersei would never let Tommen have. Jaime’s neph—his _son_—began opening up to him in a way that he thought would never happen. Myrcella, too, is starting to warm up to Jaime, swayed as she is by Bear and how much the ‘cat’ loves him. It seems that Bear, like Brienne, has his own inexplicable charms.

“You planned this all along, didn’t you?” he had asked Brienne one night, nodding towards Bear. The ‘cat’ was nestled at their feet, on Jaime’s ludicrously expensive duvet cover, instead of in his own ludicrously expensive heated cat bed. “Bear, and the kids.”

“Maybe I did,” she had said, with a small smile. “Tommen told me how much he wanted one when we saw one of the strays out on the street. I thought it was worth trying, to help with the kids. But I didn’t want you to get disappointed if it failed, so I didn’t tell you. I’m glad it turned out better than I expected.”

“You’re better than I deserve, you know that?”

“I wouldn’t be with you if you were less than I deserve, as I always remind you when you say such things.”

“I know, I know. Speaking of the kids, I… I’ve been thinking.” Jaime had been thinking about it for weeks, actually, but he had felt too nervous to broach the subject with Brienne till then. “About… custody. I haven’t spoken to a lawyer yet, so I’m not really sure what my options are. But they’re here so often, these days. And… I don’t think things are going very well back home, with Cersei.”

“No. I don’t think so.” Myrcella had told Brienne some things, Jaime knew, though Brienne had promised his daughter to keep them secret for now.

“Will you mind, if they’re here even more often? Or… permanently? I—I know you didn’t sign up for all of this. My past, and… everything.”

“I signed up for you, didn’t I?” was her reply. “I knew enough, before we even started dating.” In fact, when she had first found out—or rather, first confirmed the rumours that had swirled around the Lannisters for years—she hadn’t spoken to him for a whole month. He had thought he had lost her friendship forever, young and shaky as it was back then. “People have their histories,” she continued, as if Jaime’s history isn’t infinitely more fucked up than most. “You’ve had to deal with a fair share of mine.”

Jaime had kissed her, then.

As he runs his fingers through Bear’s fur, he thinks about how he’s had to deal with Brienne’s histories, all her traumas. They still manifest, in small ways, every day. But what he’s done for her, it seems like nothing compared to what’s he’s asking her to do. She didn’t think she was going to be living with anyone other than him when she moved in, first of all, and now there’s a child and a teenager in their apartment more than half the time. And she’s had to become a sort of—guardian to the kids, alongside him. He doesn’t really know what else to call her, or himself, since Robert is still their father on paper. Of course the man hasn’t been around lately, not that he was a particularly present father for the two younger children when he and Cersei were still married, between his businesses _and_ his mistresses.

But if Jaime _does_ become their father, legally—he’s not looking forward to discussing this with Cersei—what would Brienne be, then? He supposes she’d be their stepmother, perhaps, if she agrees when he finally asks her to marry him. He expects she will take weeks, maybe months, to give him an answer. She knows what she’d be signing up for, marrying Jaime. That’s a decision that will take time.

Anyway, they’ll work it out eventually. They always do, him and Brienne. In the meantime, he will sit here with this ‘cat’ that looks nothing like a cat, a ‘cat’ who couldn’t care less about Jaime’s history. Even if his feline brain could comprehend any of it, Jaime has the sneaking suspicion that Bear might love him regardless of it all.

Once, Jaime thought he had done far too many terrible things in his life to warrant such a love. A love, _regardless_. But—that was a long time ago.

That was before Brienne.


	8. “Can you stay?” (Professors AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, obvious as it was, I didn't write a S8 fix-it for this prompt.

Brienne Tarth didn’t know why Catelyn Stark insisted on being so fertile.

At the end of every academic year, the History department at King’s Landing University selected two professors to plan their slate of public lectures for the following academic year. Or, as in Brienne and Catelyn’s case, two professors could volunteer to do so. Barring their own research and travel plans, they could then spend the summer arranging for speakers, particularly for the start of the first semester, when everyone still had the energy and motivation to show up for these lectures in the first place.

Then Catelyn had to go and get pregnant with her _fifth_ child. 

Brienne was aware that the fourth pregnancy had been complicated. Catelyn and her husband Ned didn’t want to take any chances with the fifth, which was certainly fair for them to do. But they already had _four_. _Five_ including Ned’s nephew, whom they had adopted after he was orphaned at birth. As Catelyn went on her impromptu sabbatical, Brienne found herself cursing Catelyn’s womb, and Ned’s… nope, she didn’t want to even consider anything about Ned that was below his neck.

It’s not that it would have been very troublesome for Brienne to partner with another professor, although she and Catelyn did come up with a sort of—narrative arc, Brienne might call it—for their proposed line-up.

It’s more that she was partnered with _this _professor.

Professor Jaime Lannister.

Who was only replacing Catelyn Stark because he’d evaded this responsibility for nigh on seven academic years, and the department decided enough was enough. Except the person who had to suffer for this wasn’t Jaime Lannister, but _her_. Brienne Tarth.

Brienne wasn’t even sure how Jaime Lannister had remained employed by the university for this long—ten, fifteen years, she thinks. There was that whole business with Aerys Targaryen, back when he was a PhD student. And the other business with his sister Cersei, which had gone on for even longer. Surely there was some kind of university code of ethics that Jaime Lannister was violating by simply existing. Did Lannister money work for this too? It wasn’t a secret that his father didn’t approve of his career in academia, but a respectable position at King’s Landing University was still the best that an academic based in Westeros could really hope for. Brienne certainly treasured her position, which she had very fortunately secured upon completing her own PhD, with enthusiastic support from Catelyn.

Anyway, Jaime Lannister—or Professor Lannister, as she insisted on calling him, though he had asked her to call him Jaime multiple times—was the most maddening person Brienne had ever encountered in her short career. In the first meeting, he had shot down three-quarters of the proposal that she and Catelyn had already devised. _Too boring_, he had said, _we should shake things up a bit._ All he had to do was go along with the damn proposal, and he couldn’t even do _that_. Why didn’t he _shake things up_ in any of the last seven years he could have taken on this responsibility?

On top of that, he just wouldn’t do things over email, like _normal people_ do. He insisted on meeting her in person for every single thing, which also meant she had to take notes during these meetings rather than just refer to their non-existent emails, which was truly a waste of her time. _It’s much better to talk in person, Prof, don’t you think? _Jaime Lannister had said. _Gets the juices flowing._

And of course, there was that whole “Prof” thing. He refused to call her Professor Tarth, or even Professor, as if it was so difficult to add two extra syllables. And the _way_ he said it—like he didn’t think she even deserved the position. Because she was too young, or because she was a woman, or maybe it might even be because of how she looked, like that mattered at all. (Fine, maybe it mattered to him, given how many students of all genders were lining up to take his classes. Because of how _hot_ he was, or _whatever_. And he got great student reviews, also probably because of how _hot _he was, or _whatever_. That must be why the university kept him on.) 

She had thought, on occasion, that she might prefer if he called her Brienne. But she would never suggest _that_. Seemed too _intimate._

Of all the things that had been bothering her about Jaime Lannister, however, he had this one bizarre habit that got on her nerves more than any of the others. 

Every single time since their third meeting—and the meetings always had to be in _his _office, obviously—he’d always ask her at the end:

“Can you stay?”

The first time he had asked her, she had been too shocked to say anything other than “No,” before she stumbled out of his room without even so much as a “Goodbye, Professor Lannister.” The second time, she had replied, “What for?” and he had said, “Oh, I don’t know Prof. We’re between academic years and I’m bored.” As if they shouldn’t be doing research, or working on material for their summer classes, or other things they were hired by the university to do. “We could talk about your love life. Or lack thereof,” he smirked. That _definitely_ made her want to refuse.

And so she did. Again and again, meeting after meeting. And he just kept asking her, with the same smirk. Like it was such a joke for Professor Lannister and Professor Tarth to even be in each other’s presence unless they were forced by obligation. Brienne certainly thought it was a joke, and she was happy to keep it firmly as a joke. But two months into this whole charade, on a particularly frustrating day triggered by a particularly terrible date with a particularly loathsome man that her father insisted on setting her up with, she decided, on a whim, to say something different.

“Can you stay?” he asked, as usual.

“_Fine_, Professor Lannister. _Jaime_.” She tried to infuse his name with as much derision as she could possibly manage. “I’ll _stay_. You said you wanted to talk about my love life, didn’t you?”

“Oh… um…” he responded, or tried to. 

He was actually speechless. He usually couldn’t shut up, but Brienne Tarth had actually rendered Jaime Lannister speechless. It felt _amazing_.

“Well, I went on a terrible date last night,” Brienne snapped. “There. What else do you want to know?”

“Oh. You’re _dating_?” Of course he found it unbelievable.

“I am not _dating_. I went on _a_ date, despite not really _wanting _to date, and regretted it entirely.”

“You don’t _want_ to date?” he had said, oddly tentative. _That_ was his question? What was with this obsession with her love life? Or the distinct _lack thereof_?

“Don’t you have anything else you would rather ask me?” Brienne exhaled. “You always ask me if I can stay, I finally say yes, and you’re telling me this is what I’m staying for? Professor Lannister?”

“_Jaime_,” he corrected, like he always did. “And I—I didn’t really have a plan for when you actually agreed. Or I did, but you’ve been saying no for so long that I find myself struggling to recall what it is, Brienne.”

He called her _Brienne_. She was so thrown by that, she couldn’t come up with any kind of witty response.

“If I remember correctly,” he continued, looking to the ceiling, “The plan was to charm you with some conversation outside of planning all these lectures. And then maybe after a few more sessions of this, I might have asked you out to dinner.”

“What,” was all Brienne’s brain could produce in that moment.

He turned his head back to her. “I’ve sat in on some of your classes, you know that?” Brienne did know that. She’d spied him in the very last row of her lecture theatre a number of times, over the last year, and hadn’t known what to make of it. “And your research focus is very interesting.”

“You wanted to ask me out to dinner to… talk about my _research_?”

“Well,” he drawled, “I’m not opposed to that topic of conversation. But I would much rather be able to talk about other things, too. And, potentially, _do_ other things. If _you’re_ not opposed.”

“Oh.” It was finally dawning on Brienne. “Are you… asking me out?”

“I seem to be doing a bad job of it, Brienne, but that was the plan. Still is.”

“_Why?_”

He gave her a confused look. “Why not?”

Brienne laughed nervously, but also maybe a bit more harshly than she had intended. “I can think of a lot of reasons why not.”

Jaime’s eyes narrowed. “Ah. Aerys Targaryen.”

That was part of it, deep down, but it hadn’t really been at the forefront of her mind. “I didn’t mean to imply—” Brienne scrambled.

“But that _is_ one of your reasons, isn’t it? _Professor Tarth_?” His voice dripped with something that she didn’t quite like.

“Look, let’s just forget I said that, Professor Lannister. I’ll—I’ll just go.”

“Jaime. My name is Jaime,” he repeated, as he got up from his chair and walked towards his office door. “But you agreed to stay, didn’t you, Brienne?”

Brienne nods her head stupidly.

“And you’re a woman of your word, aren’t you?”

“I… I’d like to think that I am,” she mumbled.

“Okay. Please don’t panic, Brienne, but I am going to lock this door.” That was not reassuring in the least, but Brienne had to admit she was intrigued. She didn’t think Jaime Lannister would try anything untoward, and she was quite sure she’d be able to subdue him if he did. “I promise I am not going to do anything other than… speak. Tell you a story. And I need some privacy for this story.”

“What—what story?”

“Sit, Brienne. I’ll tell you exactly what happened with Aerys Targaryen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do not ask me what the deal is with Aerys, because I honestly do not know. This is longer than a ficlet already, and that's where the story ends for now.


	9. “There is a certain taste to it.” (Police AU)

When Brienne Tarth was first posted to the tiny police department of an affluent, sleepy suburb on the outskirts of King’s Landing, she thought her life was going to be one thing—

Boring.

She had been fresh out of the Academy after working her ass off for—for her whole life, really. And she would have been on track for a posting to the King’s Landing Police Department, if not for a string of unfortunate incidents, and a number of even more unfortunate people whom she still occasionally fantasised about punching in the face. 

After all of that, she got diverted _here_ instead. Where the crime rate is so low that even a stolen bicycle is enough to send shockwaves through the neighbourhood.

Good for them. Boring for Brienne.

Or so she thought. For some very unexpected reasons, she eventually realised this posting was anything _but_ boring. 

Still, the crime scene before her right now is definitely not the sort she had ever expected to encounter _here_.

“Seven hells,” she exhales. “What in the name of the Mother happened here?”

Brienne Tarth is currently standing in the doorway of the one abandoned house along the suburb’s longest street, accompanied by her partner Jaime Lannister—also known as the source of at least five of those very unexpected reasons why this posting was anything but boring. This house had been left empty and forgotten after its last owner passed away a decade ago. Even though rumours about it being haunted had unsurprisingly spread among the neighbourhood’s younger demographic, it seems harmless enough, most days.

But not today. 

Today, its living room is splattered floor to ceiling with blood. No body, or bodies, not that she can see, but there’s _a lot of blood_.

And yet, Jaime is being unnaturally calm about all of this.

“We should call for back-up, Lannister.”

“Hmm,” Jaime grunts, as he makes his way into the living room, stepping around—no, he’s actually stepping _on_ some of the blood.

“Lannister,” she hisses, “you are walking into an _active crime scene_.”

“I know what I’m doing, rookie,” he replies. What he’s doing is plastering himself to the floor—in one of the only clean human-sized spots in the whole room—and putting his nose right up to a particularly large puddle of blood. It’s _so much blood._ Whomever, or _what_ever, the blood once belonged to, they have to be dead by now.

“_Lannister_,” Brienne hisses again.

He holds up a finger to shush her. _Rude_. He’s—is he sniffing the puddle? And now he’s taking that same finger he used to shush her and—he’s _dipping_ it into the blood. Brienne is about to hiss at him once more when he just—

_puts his finger into his mouth._

“What. The. Fuck.”

“Interesting.” He smacks his lips. “There is a certain taste to it. Wanna try?” Jaime dips his finger in the puddle again and holds it out in her direction.

“_Absolutely not!_ Are you insane?” That was a rhetorical question. He’s _insane_.

Jaime just sticks his finger in his mouth again, and sucks it clean. “It’s very sweet.”

_Hold on._

“Did you say…_ sweet_?”

“It’s fake blood, rookie,” he laughs. He dips his finger in the puddle again, and walks over to her. “Seriously. Try it.”

Brienne takes a sniff of Jaime’s finger. It _does_ smell sweet, she supposes. Tentatively, she sticks her tongue out and licks his finger, resolutely ignoring the suggestive look in his eye.

“Huh. It _is_ sweet. Tastes like… chocolate.”

“Told you.”

Brienne can’t help but blush with embarrassment as she thinks of her earlier overreaction. “How—how did you know it was fake?”

“Didn’t you notice a distinct lack of that metallic tang in the air, rookie?” 

Oh. She had been so taken aback by the entire scene that she hadn’t really noticed, which just made her feel even more stupid. In fairness, it’s not as if she’s had the opportunity to encounter _that_ many blood-soaked crime scenes.

“Anyway,” Jaime continues. “Had to make some one year for Myrcella’s Stranger’s Eve costume. Corn syrup, chocolate syrup, red food colouring.” He touches his still ‘blood’-stained finger to the tip of her nose. “Don’t let her sweet demeanour fool you, rookie. My daughter has a penchant for some pretty intense horror movies.”

Brienne wipes her nose on the back of her hand. She remembers the one time she and Jaime watched a horror movie over at her apartment, and she is absolutely sure Myrcella did not get that penchant from _him._

“What should we do now, then? We’re just going to leave it?” she asks, as she follows Jaime out the door. “What if—what if it’s not _all _fake?”

“Ah, thorough as usual,” Jaime says, with that mocking tone that had so irritated her in her first few weeks on the job.

“You always say that like it’s a bad thing,” she retorts.

“Alright, fine,” he concedes, walking out into the overgrown front garden. “It _might_ be something. Much more likely that it’s a Stranger’s Eve prank. Something usually happens to this house around this time of the year.”

Brienne pauses a few steps behind him. “We should still get forensics in to be absolutely sure.”

“We’ll need a cleaning crew, more like,” Jaime says, turning back around to face her. “And Podrick Payne is not ‘Forensics’, _rookie_.” 

“He has a degree and a job title that says otherwise, _Lannister_.”

“A degree he received less than a year ago, and there’s barely enough proper equipment back at our poor excuse for a lab for that degree to have any use. Might I remind you that he was hired only to soothe the paranoid minds of all the rich bastards who live in this neighbourhood?”

“Oh, are you including yourself in that category, _Jaime_?” Brienne shoots back.

“You can save all that sneering for when you finally see my place tonight, _Brienne_.” Upon saying that, Jaime gives her a searching look. “You’re still coming over for dinner, right?”

“As long as I don’t arrive to a giant pot of fake blood bubbling on your stove, yes, I’m still coming over. My plans have not changed since you last asked me _this morning_, Jaime.”

“Good.” He looks relieved, and she’s really not quite sure why he’s anxious at all. She knows things have been—changing, lately, between them. She’s having dinner with him and his kids at his house, for Gods’ sakes, even if just as his friend. She and Jaime haven’t really done anything to nudge things firmly in the direction that she knows they’re already heading. But she had thought, between the two of them, that she should have much more cause to be anxious when that nudging finally begins. 

Brienne Tarth is finding that there’s still so much more to Jaime Lannister that she hasn’t uncovered. And what she _has_ uncovered so far—all of that already feels like three lifetimes’ worth of secrets.

“The kids are excited,” Jaime interrupts her thoughts, as they walk back out to their car.

“So am I.”

“You aren’t nervous?” That is definitely not a question he would bother asking if she was having dinner with them just as his _friend_. “You haven’t really spent much time with them besides those few times they’ve come to the station.”

“Not really, no,” Brienne shrugs. “I have full confidence in my charms.”

“Oh, do you?” he teases, as he opens the door for her. On the passenger side.

“Oh no you don’t. I’m driving. I have the keys.” She waves them in his face, making sure to keep an iron grip on them.

“Fine,” he groans, as he gets into the car. “I know you won’t ever listen to me, but could you at least drive slightly faster than turtle-speed, this time?”

“I drive at a perfectly adequate speed, thank you very much.”

Jaime rolls his eyes and closes the door. “So what were you saying about your charms?” he asks, when Brienne gets in on her _rightful_ side.

“I charmed _you_. Grumpy old Lannister, complaining all day about being partnered with the rookie.”

“I’m very sure _you_ were the grumpy one, being partnered with the _Kingslayer_.” He can say that word now with a kind of jokingly ominous tone that he would never have been able to muster in the early days of their partnership. 

(Of course, that was months before he had told her the real story behind the name.)

Brienne starts the car and plants her hands on the steering wheel. “How about we review the evidence over dinner?”

“I’ll be more than happy to do so,” Jaime counters. “I’ll have Myrcella and Tommen on my side.”

“And I’ll have proof on mine,” she says, as she drives away from the abandoned house. “In addition to my charms.” 

She has a feeling, in fact, that Jaime’s kids won’t be as partial to him as he might like to think.

Oh, dinner is going to be _fun._


	10. “Listen, I can’t explain it, you’ll have to trust me.” (X-Files AU)

Once upon a time, Special Agent Lannister enjoyed making slideshows.

For every case file that crossed his desk, he’d put together at least one. Sometimes they were just about the bare facts, and the process would help him work out his ideas. Sometimes they were funny (or they’d make _him_ laugh, anyway). Sometimes he had to fill two slide projectors because he was in the mood to indulge his Conspiracy Theory of the Month.

He had no one to show these slideshows to, most of the time. But he still enjoyed it. Maybe it was exactly the reason why he enjoyed it.

Then, Special Agent Tarth was assigned to the X-Files. To _his_ project.

And Special Agent Tarth extinguished all the joy he had once derived from making slideshows.

Oh, he knew why they sent her to him. She’s all no-nonsense, by-the-book, everything-has-a-scientific-explanation. She was sent to debunk every single theory he had for every single unexplained phenomenon contained within the X-Files. They had her stuck to him like a limpet—a very unwilling limpet, it seemed, but she clung to him nonetheless. They refused to give Tarth her own office, or even her own desk. She was just always sitting there, right in front of him, even when he knew she was writing reports on their cases to the higher-ups who desperately wanted the X-Files to disappear. All six-feet-and-then-some of her taking up space in _his_ basement office. He was already six-feet-and—okay, he was six feet tall. Regardless, the office had been small enough without an extra six-feet-and-then-some.

But he could handle all of that. It was par for the course considering what he’s had to deal with from the Bureau over the years. What _really_ bothered him was how she reacted to his beloved slideshows.

Truth be told, he had thought she might be quite impressed by them at first. But she was just so… _negative._ All those rational questions, and derisive comments, and eye-rolling, and “This is a very extensive slideshow, Lannister. If you could learn to be more concise, maybe we’d have more money in our budget.” Well, one day he’ll have her know that he pays for his slideshows with the little Lannister money he managed to put away before his father cut him off.

Anyway, there’ll be no slideshow this morning. They’re off on another case, and it’s the one case he’s been itching to revisit.

“Tarth, don’t get comfortable,” he says, just as she steps in the door. “I have a flight booked for us to the Riverlands.”

“What’s the case?”

He hands her the case file. “Read it on the plane.”

“What, no slideshow?” she asks, too innocently.

“You’ve crushed all my enthusiasm for making slideshows, Tarth,” he grumbles, pushing her out into the corridor. “Thought I’d skip what has become a painful experience for both of us. Now hurry along, we have a flight to catch.”

She puts her arm out to stop him from passing. Why are her arms _so long_? “Really,” she deadpans. “That’s all it is? It’s never stopped you before. _What’s the case?_”

“Fine. It’s—it’s Lady Stoneheart, alright?” he states, defiantly.

Tarth laughs in his face. It’s the exact same laugh-in-his-face he got when he gave her his Lady Stoneheart slideshow presentation on one of their particularly slow days. In fact, it had been his favourite slideshow. Until she laughed in his face.

“What are the details, then? Why now?”

“Two men found hanging from trees,” he says, vaguely, as he ducks under her arm and heads for the elevator.

“That’s—not to treat their deaths lightly, but _that’s it_?” She’s stalking down the corridor behind him, and he has to speed up to keep in front of her. Why are her _legs_ so long? “We’re flying all the way to the Riverlands for _this_? You can’t prove there’s a Stoneheart connection.”

They reach the elevator doors, and he turns to face her. “Listen, Tarth. I can’t explain it. There’s a connection, I know it. You’ll just have to trust me on this one.”

“You _can’t_ explain it? Usually you talk my ear off with all your explanations.”

“Look,” Lannister sighs, slamming his hand on the ‘up’ button. “There’s something I never told you. Lady Stoneheart—it’s personal.”

“_Personal_?” _Why does the woman speak in a permanent scoff?_ “Are we talking about the same mystical ghost of a woman who supposedly wanders the forests of the Riverlands, alternately seeking revenge for the death of her son _and_ searching for her two lost daughters?”

“As I’ve told you a hundred times, Tarth, Lady Stoneheart is not a _ghost_.” Great, the elevator is here, and now he’s trapped in a metal box with Tarth and no one else. “And yes, I worked a case, years ago. Never solved. And I have… ties, to people in the know. They told me things in confidence.”

“I’m your _partner_, Lannister. I would appreciate if you could let me in on details that are pertinent to a case that we’re flying halfway across the continent to investigate.”

“My _partner_?” he whispers, injecting the two words with as much contempt as he possibly can, as they step out of the elevator into the Bureau’s crowded lobby. “I’m sorry if I sometimes find it hard to consider you my partner when you were essentially sent to destroy my life’s work.”

Tarth grabs his shoulder. “You just asked me to trust you,” she whispers in response, darting her eyes around the lobby nervously. He might just be influencing her with some of his paranoia—_warranted_ paranoia, in his opinion. “You won’t do me the same courtesy?”

He leans in closer to her, in just the way he knows makes her blush, and she does. She’s predictable, that way. “I’ll tell you what you need to know, when we meet the people who will give me that permission. Just—treat it like we’re going to seek justice for these two dead men. How about that? I know you can’t resist _that_, Tarth.”

“Fine, Lannister.” She breaks away from him and heads for the exit. “Let’s catch this flight.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, don't ask me about the Stoneheart thing, I have no clue what the case is. Jaime can't explain it, and I can't either.


	11. “It's not always like this.” (Modern AU)

“Hmm. It’s not always like this.”

_Seven hells. Talk about the understatement of the century._

“Wow, really, Jaime? I couldn’t tell _at all_.”

“Alright, Brienne, I know this isn’t what we expected, but you can tone down the snark.”

_Tone down the—is he serious?_

“Jaime Lannister. We just drove _five hours_ from the city—first, in traffic, then, in snow—just so we could spend a weekend at your family’s ‘very romantic’ lakeside cabin.” Brienne gestures wildly at what is currently the extremely charred remains of what _might_ have been a ‘very romantic’ lakeside cabin. “Said cabin has quite clearly _burned down_. I think I’m allowed some snark.”

Admittedly, she might have been less agitated if Jaime’s road trip entertainment of choice hadn’t been all eight episodes of a true crime podcast. A true crime podcast about a couple who had been murdered in a very romantic lakeside cabin. Brienne is feeling quite jealous of the couple for having a cabin in the first place. May they rest in peace.

“Get back in the car,” Jaime sighs, as he takes out his phone. “I’m calling Tyrion. Thank the gods we still have reception.”

“How are you so _calm_ about this?” Brienne groans, as she climbs into her seat. But Jaime has no chance to respond, because his brother picks up almost immediately.

“Hello, dear brother,” says Tyrion’s tinny voice via loudspeaker. “To what do I owe the honour of this phone call?”

“Tyrion. I am currently in the car with Brienne, parked in front of what used to be our lakeside cabin.”

“What used to be—oh. Oh, right,” Tyrion replies, with a tinge of recognition.

“_Oh, right?_” Jaime parrots. “That’s all you have to say? You’re the only other person in this family who uses this cabin, and I haven’t been back here for a year. What in the seven hells _happened_?”

“So… I _may_ have caused a little accident when I was last there over the summer. I’m a bit fuzzy on the details, as I believe I was quite drunk.”

_A ‘little accident’? What is up with the Lannister brothers and their understatements?_

“And you didn’t think, at any point in the last few months, that it might have been at all possible to casually mention that you _burned down our family cabin_?”

“Ah. We were never really good communicators, were we, us Lannisters? Anyway, it’s not even that big of a deal.”

“Tyrion,” Brienne grabs Jaime’s wrist and hisses into his phone, “you burned down an entire cabin. How is that not a big deal?”

“Well hello, Brienne. From your tone, I gather Jaime hasn’t told you about the main house.”

Brienne turns to Jaime, slowly. “What _main house_?”

“Aside from the fact that we own maybe four or five other cabins within driving distance of King’s Landing,” Tyrion continues, “the Lannisters basically own all the land around the—”

Jaime abruptly hangs up and throws his phone on the dashboard before his brother can finish.

“_What main house_, Jaime?” she repeats.

“Look,” he begins, nervously, “I know you’re still… coming to terms with our level of wealth, Brienne. And we haven’t been together all that long. I just didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“Jaime,” she says through gritted teeth, “will you please be so kind as to elaborate?”

“Remember that big house we saw, about ten minutes away?”

_Again with the understatements._

“By ‘big house’, do you mean the one I called ‘the most ostentatious manor I have ever seen with my own two eyes’? The one that seemed to be right smack in the middle of a _sprawling country estate_?”

“... Yeah. The cabin is just—on the property.”

“Oh. I see.”

“Yeah.”

Brienne slaps her hand on the dashboard. “So what are we waiting for, then?” she demands.

“Huh?” Jaime blurts, confused.

“It’s not like we’re going to be staying here for the weekend, are we?” Brienne gestures to the burnt husk of the cabin yet again. “Start the car, Jaime.”

“Oh! Um, if you’re sure,” he says, as he turns the key in the ignition.

“_Yes_, Jaime, I’m sure.” At this point, in this snow, she couldn’t give a damn how rich the Lannisters really are, as long as she has a roof over her head and a warm bed to sleep in tonight. Even if that roof is so gigantic that you’d have to multiply the length of Brienne’s King’s Landing studio apartment sixty-seven times to get from one end to the other. Even if that warm bed is covered in sheets with a thread count so astronomically high that it had to have come out of some secret textile laboratory that the Lannisters probably also owned, just so they could produce sheets with astronomically high thread counts.

Except when they arrive at the ‘main house’, there’s already a car in the driveway. Jaime brings his own car to a stop quite a distance from that car.

“Jaime, whose car is that?”

Jaime clears his throat. “... Cersei’s.”

Oh, no. Brienne does not want to spend the weekend under the same roof as Jaime’s sister. Even if they spent the entire weekend under opposite ends of a roof so gigantic you’d have to multiply the length of Brienne’s King’s Landing studio apartment sixty-seven times to get from one end to the other, she thinks she would still be able to feel Cersei’s spite emanating from all the way across the manor.

And that is not an understatement.

“Well then,” Brienne says, “I think I saw a hotel on the way, didn’t you?”

Jaime just nods vigorously as he puts the car in reverse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this wasn't a particularly interesting premise, but at least it's actually under 1,000 words?


	12. “What if I don't see it?” (Office AU)

Honestly, Brienne didn’t think it would get this out of hand.

She had only said it because she wanted to shut them up. She didn’t think it was going to _spread around the entire office_. She didn’t think Jaime Lannister would ever hear about it.

It was just driving her insane, the way Renly, Loras, and Margaery kept going on and on and on about how hot their boss is. Jaime Lannister is beautiful. She knows this. She was born with eyes. Unfortunately, she was also born with ears. And it felt like she was hearing about it _all the time_.

One day, it just—happened. She said those fateful words. And she would find herself wishing, eventually, that she hadn’t been born with a mouth.

She had been working late the night before, which had caused her to oversleep, which had caused her to miss her bus to the train station, which had caused her to miss her train, which had caused her to miss the office shuttle, which had caused her to have to walk an extra fifteen minutes in the heat. And of course, when she finally arrived, covered in sweat, she had passed Jaime Lannister in the hallway, and he had given her a _look_. Whatever the _look_ meant, she didn’t like it.

So the one thing she didn’t want to have to listen to while having her morning coffee in the office pantry was yet another inane conversation about Jaime Lannister’s hotness. A conversation in which she was expected to be an enthusiastic participant.

“What if I don’t see it?” she finally huffed, before taking the last sip of coffee from her mug.

Renly, Loras, and Margaery went quiet, so it _did_ shut them up, at least. “What do you mean, Brienne?” Margaery asked, incredulously.

“I just don’t see it. He looks average to me.” And then she got up, rinsed her mug, and left the pantry.

Okay, so it hadn’t been very wise to say this when the conversation wasn’t exactly private. They hadn’t been the only four people in the pantry, and soon, everyone in the office was talking about how Brienne Tarth thinks Jaime Lannister looks average. And Brienne knew people only talked about it so much because she isn’t much to look at, and he is. _He really is._ She was born with eyes.

But she thought it would be _fine. _Jaime Lannister isn’t even their real boss, not directly. He’s the son of the owner of the corporation that employs them, and he was just supposed to spend three months in the Stormlands office. He was coming to the end of those three months, and she knew he was meant to be transferred back to the head office in King’s Landing. He’d be gone soon, and that would be the end of that.

Then, for whatever reason—some conflict within the family, apparently—that didn’t happen.

Then, Jaime Lannister _heard._

Not only did he _hear_, he _overheard it at an office party_. When everyone, including him, was already quite drunk. Except Jaime Lannister was the only one who wasn’t in a celebratory mood—probably because of that conflict within the family, whatever it was.

And so he had walked up to Brienne, and Renly, and Loras, and Margaery. He had tapped Brienne on the shoulder, and said, quite bitterly:

“So, you’re the one who thinks I look _average_.”

All four of them just stared at him. What was Brienne supposed to say? She couldn’t tell him to his face that she thought he wasn’t good-looking. Even if he wasn’t, she wouldn’t do that _to his face_. She’d had enough of that herself, growing up.

But then, he sneered: “You? You think you’re a good judge of beauty?”

Oh, she knew the insults were coming. She knew Jaime Lannister was quite drunk. But Brienne was also quite drunk. So when he asked her if she had looked in the mirror lately—as if she hadn’t heard that one a thousand times before—she could feel the anger rise within her.

“Or maybe you have. What’s your name again? Bridget? Bridget the Beauty, is that what you think when you look in the mirror?”

_Brienne the Beauty. _He couldn’t have known, but he had stumbled upon it anyway. Maybe she wouldn’t have lost control if he hadn’t said that.

“No wonder you wouldn’t know beauty if it punched you in the face,” Jaime Lannister concluded, in all his alcohol-soaked smugness.

Next thing she knew, she had punched _him_. In the face.

And now she is sitting in HR, next to Jaime Lannister. Who has a black eye, which she inflicted, in front of the entire office.

She is absolutely going to lose her job in the next five minutes.

Except, if she had heard right, Jaime Lannister had just said: “I fell. She wasn’t responsible for this.”

Brienne just looks at him. She thought this only happened in cartoons, but her jaw might just have dropped in shock.

“You… fell? Mr Lannister, Ms Tarth punched you. We have witnesses.”

“Well,” he says, quite calmly. “I am the son of the man who pays all those witnesses their monthly salary. And I say that Ms Tarth wasn’t responsible for this. Drop it.”

Brienne knows she should say something. It isn’t right. _She punched her boss in the face._ But she just sits in stunned silence, stands up in stunned silence, leaves HR in stunned silence. It’s only when they’re both out in the hallway that she’s able to say anything.

“You—you shouldn’t have done that. I did punch you, Mr Lannister.”

“Jaime. You can call me Jaime.” As if that was the only thing to be concerned about.

“_Mr Lannister._” It wouldn’t be appropriate at all to call him Jaime, would it? “I was responsible, and I should face the consequences. Why did you… lie? For me?”

Jaime Lannister sighs. “What I said, it was unworthy.”

_Unworthy? Is this guy for real?_

“I’m—I’m not in a good place right now,” he continues, “and I’m sorry I said those things to you. I deserved that punch.”

“No, you didn’t,” Brienne asserts. “No one does. I overreacted because—”

She can’t complete the sentence. She can’t tell him about _Brienne the Beauty_. He seems to understand, though, because he has a kind of conciliatory expression on his face. She supposes he can’t tell her about _I’m not in a good place_, too.

“I feel like I did deserve it, anyway,” Jaime Lannister says. “And I’d have felt worse if you’d lost your job, Bridget.”

“Brienne.”

“I’m sorry. Brienne.”

“Okay then.” She takes a breath for what feels like the first time in the past hour, though she doesn’t quite feel relieved. “Thank you for doing that. I can’t tell you how grateful I am. If there’s ever anything you need, Mr Lannister—”

“Jaime is fine, really,” he replies, mildly exasperated. “Mr Lannister makes me sound like my father.”

“That’s not a good thing?” Brienne asks. She’s never met Tywin Lannister, but he did build this company into the corporate empire it is today. She thought his son might enjoy the comparison.

Jaime just shrugs, cryptically. “Since you’ve given me a black eye, we’re past those formalities, aren’t we?”

“I—I suppose. But thank you, again. I’ll… I’ll see you around, I guess.”

She’s walked a few steps in the direction of her cubicle when Jaime calls her back.

“Hey, Brienne?”

She turns to see him tilting his head at her, and she’s struck by the absurd thought that he reminds her of an earnest puppy. “Yes, J-Jaime?”

“Do you really think I’m only average?”

Oh. He actually seems to care about that. She wants to explain, about the way everyone was going on about his looks, and how it was driving her mad. About oversleeping, and missing buses and trains and shuttles, and just wanting to enjoy her coffee in silence.

But all she can manage is, “N-no. I don’t.”

Jaime gives her a half-smile. “Good to know,” he says, and walks away.


	13. “I never knew it could be this way.” (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, you read that right. This may not make much sense if you haven't watched the movie.

_My name is Jaime Lannister._

_When I was fifteen, I was bitten by a radioactive spider. Since then, I’ve been the one and only Spider-Man. Or so I thought. But I’ll get to that part later._

_I’ve saved King’s Landing again, and again, and again. And yet, the people of King’s Landing hate me. The things I’ve done for them have been twisted over and over by my enemies, and I’ve never had the chance to tell the true stories behind them. No one would listen._

_A few years ago, I married someone I shouldn’t have married. But I never told her about this other life of mine. I managed to keep it a secret from her, even though I’d known her pretty much my whole life, even though she was my other half. Even though being Spider-Man was half of me. She knew me only as Jaime Lannister._

_Through all of this, I just kept saving the city. I couldn’t seem to stop. Until one day, a few months ago, the city and its enemies decided for me._

_I lost my right hand. I couldn’t be Spider-Man anymore._

_Then, my wife left me. And it felt like I couldn’t be Jaime Lannister either._

_I didn’t know who I was after that. I’ve not known since. _

_Three days ago, I discovered that even when I thought I was the one and only Spider-Man, I was wrong._

_About the ‘one and only’ part, that is._

//////////

Jaime Lannister had been minding his own damn business in his own damn universe when he was thrown into this one.

All he really remembers is that he was lying in his bed, contemplating the futility of life, as he was wont to do these days. He was also in his full suit, without the right glove of course, because how else can a former Spider-Man missing a right hand best contemplate the futility of life?

Suddenly, there were violent tremors, and funny colours, and the distinct feeling of wanting to vomit. Not just the contents of his stomach, but all the internal organs in his body.

And then he was in the middle of King’s Landing.

But it _wasn’t_ King’s Landing.

It called itself King’s Landing, but it was _different_. Everything just seemed slightly… off.

At first, he thought he was dead. But everyone else could see him, and bump into him on the street, and give him strange looks, and say the words “disrespectful” and “impostor” under their breaths. Not the cruellest things the people of King’s Landing have said to him while he’s been in his suit, but they might have been the strangest.

He soon discovered the reason for those words. There was another Spider-Man in this universe, and it hadn’t been a Jaime Lannister. It was, bizarrely, _Renly Baratheon_. The brother of one of his own nemeses, in his own universe. And this Spider-Man had just died.

In this universe, the people of King’s Landing had loved Spider-Man. Jaime stood at Renly Baratheon’s grave under the dark of night and looked at the massive pile of flowers and gifts and candles and assorted Spider-Man memorabilia that had been left for him. Gods, the man had _memorabilia._

That was where he had met her. Brienne Tarth.

And by ‘met’, what he really means is, she had _body-slammed him into the ground_.

Then it was all, _Who are you? How dare you come here dressed like him? _and then they were struggling, and making far too much noise for a cemetery at night, and then there were cops, but the cops weren’t interested in _him_, they were interested in _Brienne_, for some reason, and then they were running, and then he very conveniently ran _up the side of a building_—he didn’t need a right hand for that—before he realised that Brienne was following close behind him. Running _up the side of a building_. She was far too awkward and uncomfortable about it, like he had been when he was first bitten, magnified a hundred times by her too-tall and too-broad physique. She had no litheness to her, not like a Spider-Man—or Woman, or Person really should. But there she was, defying gravity.

He would find out later that everyone thought Brienne was involved in Renly’s death. She had been his personal assistant—because in this universe, Spider-Man actually had need for a personal assistant—and she was the last to see him alive, the one who found his body. His death had been so _quiet_. No fanfare at all, unlike his life, from what Jaime could tell. But there was something about it, Brienne said. Something she thought might have been related to how Jaime was flung into their universe in the first place. She thought, in fact, that it might have had something to do with Renly’s brother. (The other one, not the one who was Jaime’s nemesis in his own world. The Baratheons were truly a choice bunch in any universe.)

Before the police had really got their bearings about whom they wanted to blame for Renly’s death—bearings likely provided by Stannis Baratheon—Brienne had been trying to conduct her own amateur investigation, which Jaime thought was the most absurd thing in the world for a personal assistant to do. But she had apparently managed to break into Stannis’s apartment, so she must have had skills, or perseverance, or dumb luck on her side. She had been at Stannis’s apartment, in fact, when she had felt a sting on her hand. Brienne had thought nothing of it—she was too preoccupied with trying not to get caught—but then, on the way home, she was getting stuck to _everything._

Sure, Stannis _obviously_ had something to do with his brother’s death, if there had been a radioactive spider loose in his apartment. But when Jaime first met Brienne—when she had first body-slammed him into the ground—she was a _mess._ A Spider-Mess, as he took to calling her. When she realised he had the very same powers, she had badgered him to teach her. Train her. He had refused vehemently, and pointed at his stump equally vehemently.

She had just looked at him with those unnecessarily blue eyes of hers, looked at him like it didn’t matter that he was missing a right hand.

Jaime gave in, after that. What’s the point, he supposed, of having superpowers if you didn’t know what to do with them?

They had spent the past three days training. Figuring things out, while keeping under the radar, though Jaime knew Brienne was anxious to get to the bottom of whatever Stannis Baratheon was planning. Brienne knew how to fight, even before she had been bitten—she had wanted something to do, with a body built like hers, begged her father to send her to a variety of martial arts classes since she was a kid. But being a Spider-Man, or Woman, or Person—that takes a different approach to the body. And Brienne was _stubborn_. She had such set ways of using her body, and Jaime had to get her to break all those habits. Even more so when he finally started her on the whole web-shooting part of it. Gods, that had been disaster after disaster, and he had honestly been concerned that they might end up breaking her nose a third time.

Now, three days in—during which Jaime had felt, maybe, a little bit like Spider-Man again—they are finally getting somewhere. They’d had to split his two existing web-shooters between them, so far, so they will need to sort that out first thing tomorrow, but in the meantime, they had earned themselves a break. A break far away from the city they’re meant to protect, though Brienne hadn’t quite gotten to the city-protecting stage yet.

In Jaime’s opinion, far _above_ the city works just as well as far _away_. So they are lying on a rooftop—his favourite rooftop, from his own universe, and he is glad it exists in this one too. He is using his mask as a pillow, and Brienne is doing the same with her own makeshift one. (They’ll need to sort out her suit too, tomorrow, in addition to the web-shooters.)

For the past hour, they have been doing nothing but _talking_. He doesn’t remember ever doing this with anyone, not even his ex-wife. And Brienne _knows_. She knows he is Spider-Man, _and _Jaime Lannister. He tells her some of those true stories behind all the times he had saved _his_ King’s Landing, and she actually believes him. Doesn’t have any preconceived notions about a hateful Spider-Man. As Jaime stares up at the handful of stars he can see in the light-polluted night sky over King’s Landing, he thinks perhaps that he might be feeling something stir within him, with Brienne.

“I’m not sure what it’s like for you, Jaime,” she is saying now, “But I never knew it could be this way.”

Jaime feels his heart beat a tiny bit faster, but he’s frankly relieved that he resists the urge to say something stupid like, “Me too,” because he soon realises Brienne isn’t talking about what he thought she was talking about.

“My body—it was always strong,” she muses to the sky. “All muscles, and brute force. That was how I had always moved. Always fought. I was strong, but I was also… dragging this huge weight around. I learned to use that weight to my advantage, but it still hung heavy on me, you know? Then, this happened.” She lifts her arms up, looks at them like she is seeing them for the very first time. “Suddenly my body has this agility, this—this _lightness_ to it, that I’d never thought I’d feel, in a body like this.”

Jaime takes some time to consider her words. “I don’t think I can claim to understand, not exactly,” he replies, after a while. “But the truth is, before I met you three days ago, I’d forgotten what being Spider-Man can feel like. The freedom of it, of soaring through the air, of going places no other person could ever go. Even with all the shit I had to endure back in my world, that was always a solace for me. When I lost my hand—I didn’t know who I was, anymore.”

He sees Brienne turn her head out of the corner of his eye, and he turns his head to meet her unnecessarily blue gaze. “Didn’t you ever try?” she asks. “Figuring out how to make it work, without your hand.”

“Not really. Between that, and—and how everything unfolded with my ex. And the whole population of King’s Landing hating me. I suppose I—I never really had the motivation to_ try_. When I go back—”

Jaime pauses. Brienne had flinched a little, when he said those last four words.

“_If_ I go back—” He’s not sure, really, how things are going to unfold—whether he can even stay in this universe, with Brienne, and whether he _should_. But that ‘if’ is what he can offer her, now. “If I go back, I don’t know if I could keep going. I was… Just before I came here, I wasn’t sure if I could—go on.”

Brienne grabs hold of his wrist, then. “Jaime,” she whispers, so faintly he thinks he might be dreaming it. “You must. Go on, I mean.”

“I thought I’m the one who should be telling you what to do, Spider-Mess,” he quips, but she doesn’t laugh.

“Live,” she demands, and it seems to Jaime that this one word drowns out everything else but them, lying here on this rooftop. “Live, and fight, and take revenge.”


	14. “I can’t come back.” (Office AU Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A continuation of [the office AU from two days ago](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20848634/chapters/49937018). It got a lot softer considering she punched him in the first one. There’s mention of Cersei, and at the very least there’s some unhealthy codependency between her and Jaime. But she’s married to someone other than Robert in this one (since Renly is just a colleague of Brienne in this story, it probably wouldn’t make sense for Cersei to be married to Robert back in King’s Landing). I didn’t name him, but I imagine it’d be Rhaegar or something.

For the past few weeks, Brienne Tarth has been dancing with Jaime Lannister.

Not in a club. Not in a ballroom. Not even in one of those classes at the gym that Margaery keeps trying to drag her to.

They have been dancing in the Stormlands office of Lannister Corp. For _weeks_.

When Brienne had returned to her cubicle, job still intact even after _punching the son of the owner of the company in the face_—everyone in the office was bewildered. “He felt bad,” was all Brienne could say, lamely, to anyone who dared to ask. She wasn’t quite sure herself how it had happened either. Their whole conversation in the hallway outside HR—the one which had ended, bizarrely, with him asking her to confirm her opinion on his looks—it had all felt like a dream.

_Good to know_, he had said. Like he really cared what Brienne thought about him. She didn’t tell anyone about that part. Especially not Renly, and Loras, and Margaery.

And then, the dance began.

She wasn’t conscious of the dance, for the first few days. Jaime had to walk by her cubicle if he wanted to go to the pantry, she reasoned. Or if he wanted to make copies of any documents at the copy machine. Perhaps it wasn’t the most direct route, but it wasn’t that much of a detour, either. He would walk by, and he would say her name in greeting. She would say his name in response. And on the way back, he would simply smile at her, the same half-smile he had given her when he had said, _Good to know._

On the third day, once Jaime had passed her desk and offered her that half-smile, Margaery rolled over in her chair from her own cubicle.

“Brienne,” she whispered, even though Jaime was already out of earshot.

“Yes?” Brienne replied, absently, still preoccupied with trying to perfect the phrasing of the email she was in the middle of composing.

“What’s going on with you and Jaime Lannister?”

Brienne’s fingers paused on her keyboard. She didn’t like the slyness in Margery’s tone. “I wasn’t aware there was anything _going on_.”

Margaery swung Brienne’s chair to face her. “You’re telling me that you came out of that meeting with HR three days ago, and suddenly you’re on a first name basis with him, not to mention he’s been walking by your cubicle multiple times a day—and there’s _nothing going on_?”

“He needs to go to the pantry. Make copies,” she explained, already feeling the emptiness of it. She wasn’t sure what Margaery was trying to imply, at that point, but whatever it was, it was not a conversation she was prepared to have.

“He has an espresso machine in his office, Brienne. And an assistant to make copies for him.”

“Maybe he thinks mixing with the plebeians is good for office morale.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Brienne,” Margaery says, but Brienne had swung her chair back to face her computer before Margaery could continue, and insistently began typing again. She could feel Margaery rolling her eyes behind her.

As much as Brienne didn’t want to acknowledge the dance—she’d made that mistake before, with Renly, until she realised he was spending far more time with Loras—Jaime just kept walking by her cubicle. He didn’t _have to_, did he? He has an espresso machine, and an assistant. Margaery’s words bounced around in her brain, to her annoyance.

When the next week came around, Brienne felt compelled to respond, in some way. She started finding reasons to walk by _his_ office, too. He had his own, of course, and it was behind a wall of glass, so she couldn’t greet him with his name the way he greeted her when he came to her cubicle. But she could smile at him through the glass, at least, and he could smile at her. Even if he was in the middle of something—a meeting, a phone call, whatever. Brienne guessed she was hard to miss, with her height.

That was how it went, for the first three weeks after the meeting with HR. They hadn’t even had a real conversation since that day. Unfortunately for her, Renly and Loras had caught on, too, and she was having to field questions and looks and comments from them in addition to Margaery. Given that other people in the office would stop their conversations abruptly whenever she appeared, Brienne knew she hadn’t escaped being the subject of their gossip.

But nothing had _happened_, really, between her and Jaime. Well, nothing besides Brienne not losing her job after punching him in the face. She wasn’t lying when she said again and again that there was nothing going on.

In any case, it felt safe, this dance. It was just greetings, and smiles, and nods of the head. Brienne suspected Jaime liked its safety too.

And then, the dance stopped. For three whole days.

All because she had been in the stairwell at exactly the wrong moment.

Brienne had the habit of hiding in the stairwell, sometimes, if she ever needed a breather in the middle of the day. She’d go up a floor or two, dust off a step, and just sit there. It’s somewhere to be away from everyone for a few minutes. But that day, the day before the dance had stopped for three days, she heard the door to the stairwell open, then close.

And then she heard Jaime’s voice.

“Cersei, please stop calling me.”

_Cersei. That’s his sister’s name, isn’t it?_ Brienne found herself holding her breath.

“I can’t come back, okay? No—I _won’t_. I don’t want to, not anymore. I don’t want to deal with you, or your husband, not at that office, not in that city. I’m tired of all of it. If Father wants to keep me in the family business, he’ll have to settle for me being here.”

_Oh, I really shouldn’t be hearing any of this_, she thought to herself in panic. But she had nowhere to go.

“Don’t say those things if you don’t mean them, Cersei.” Jaime was practically spitting into his phone now. “Don’t you _dare_ beg me for _anything._”

There was an intensity in Jaime’s voice, in the way he was speaking to his sister, that disturbed Brienne. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but it was… _strange_.

Then, of course, she had to go and do the phenomenally stupid thing of _dropping her phone_.

The sound echoed in the stairwell. Jaime fell silent.

It wasn’t like Brienne had anywhere to hide, after that. She picked up her phone—her hands had been trembling, she remembers—and walked very slowly down the stairs.

Jaime didn’t say anything, when he saw her. He just stared.

“I’m sorry. I was—I didn’t mean to.” They were meaningless words, and she winced as she said them. But he still didn’t respond. So she slipped by him, and walked back to her desk.

The next day, Jaime didn’t come to her cubicle. Brienne took it as a sign that the dance was over, and she didn’t walk by his office again. It hurt, for some reason, which made her feel silly. But she was glad the dance hadn’t gone much further than that. It would have hurt more.

Three days after that, however, it just—resumed. Jaime walked by her cubicle, greeted her, just like it had been three days before. As if nothing had changed. As if she hadn’t eavesdropped on his conversation in the stairwell.

Brienne was mystified by the whole thing. But all she really had with Jaime was that first name basis, when it came down to it. It’s not like she could just ask him what had happened. And now it’s been a week since they started up again, and she’s walking by his office, holding a file tight to her chest, ignoring the pointed look his assistant is directing her way.

Then, Jaime introduces a new step in the dance.

He’s waving her into his office.

So she introduces a new step, too.

She pushes the glass door open.

“Brienne,” he says, just like he does when he walks by her cubicle.

“Jaime,” she responds. She can’t decide if she wants him to acknowledge the stairwell incident at all.

“You said I could ask you if I had anything I needed, didn’t you?” Jaime is leaning back in his chair, with a kind of practiced languidness, though he’s fiddling with a pen at the same time.

“Yes, of course.” Brienne is now very concerned about the direction this conversation is heading.

“You’re from around here, right? The Stormlands?”

_Okay. I guess we’re not acknowledging the stairwell incident._

“Y-yes. Yes I am,” she manages to say. “Well, from the island of Tarth, actually, off the coast.” _Of course it’s off the coast, you idiot, it’s an island._ “Hence the last name.”

“Ah. But you’re familiar with the region.”

“I grew up on the island, but went to high school on the mainland, yes. And university.”

“Do you think you could show me around sometime?”

Brienne almost drops the file she’s hugging in her arms.

“What?”

“I’m planning on being here for a while, as you know.” _As you know from the one-sided conversation you overheard in the stairwell._ “Haven’t done much sightseeing so far. If you don’t mind playing tour guide, I could use one.”

Brienne is currently very confused, so she responds in the only possible way she knows how: “Oh. O-okay. Sure.”

“Okay. Good,” Jaime says. Her brain feels like it’s on fire right now, but if she’s reading him right, Jaime actually looks _reassured_ that she agreed. “How’s this weekend? Or we can find some other time, if you have plans already.”

“I have no plans,” she answers, a bit too quickly. _Great, now he thinks I don’t have a social life. _She had answered so quickly, in fact, because she had wanted to get out of lunch with Margaery, whom she knew would spend the entire meal interrogating her about Jaime.

Obviously she wouldn’t tell Margaery _why_ she had to cancel.

“Okay. I can… email you?” Jaime cocks his head expectantly, like he’s waiting for her to suggest a more convenient means of communication.

“Oh! Um. Texting is probably easier. I’ll give you my number.” She can feel herself blushing as she says those words, which is a step she had very much _not_ wanted to introduce into the dance.

Brienne almost suggests typing her number straight into his phone, but thinks perhaps Jaime’s phone might still be a sensitive subject for them both. So she walks towards his desk, tears off a page from his notepad, and writes down her number.

“Here. Text me whenever,” she says, holding out the paper.

“I will. Thank you.”

When she’s almost back at her cubicle, she feels her phone vibrate in her pocket. She puts the file that she’s been clutching down on her desk—it was just a prop, really, for the dance; it’s filled with paperwork from a project that concluded more than a year ago. She takes her phone out of her pocket and looks at the screen.

**It’s Jaime**, the notification says. Just those two words.


	15. “That’s what I’m talking about!” (Childhood Friends AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t even know anymore.

“What’s this, Brie?”

Brienne swivels to see her classmate Jaime swinging a cardboard sword in the air. A sword she is sure was secured to her backpack when she last checked it a few minutes ago.

“Be careful with that, Jaime!” She snatches it back from him and cradles it in her arms, careful not to touch the glitter on the hilt. “I worked really hard on it!”

“You made it yourself?” Jaime asks, wide-eyed. “That’s so cool!”

Brienne feels the heat spreading on her face. Jaime always seems to make her blush, and she’s not sure why. “My dad helped, but yeah,” she mumbles, still holding tightly to the sword.

“Did you make it for show-and-tell?”

“Yeah. It’s called Oathkeeper. It’s my favourite sword.”

Brienne stops herself before she goes into too many details. She knows lots of facts about historical Westerosi weapons, even the less famous ones, the ones that aren’t made out of Valyrian steel. She makes her dad bring her to the King’s Landing Museum every other weekend just so she can look at the weapons displays. But in her eight years, she’s realised that most other kids—or even adults—don’t _want _to talk about weapons the way she does, about the stories and everything. She’s prepared a script for show-and-tell, but she’s also prepared for all her classmates to be _bored_.

To her surprise, however, Jaime exclaims, “Mine too!”

“Really?” It’s Brienne’s turn to be wide-eyed now. “I don’t know anyone else who has a favourite _sword_.”

“_I_ do!” Jaime says, proudly. “But they were sold out of Oathkeepers at the museum store. I didn’t think about _making_ one. I got Widow’s Wail instead.” Jaime pivots so he can show her his backpack, which has a replica of Oathkeeper’s sister blade strapped to it. “That’s what _I’m_ talking about! We match!”

Brienne looks down at her own cardboard Oathkeeper, a little sadly, and doesn’t think it matches Jaime’s sword at all. Hers is sturdy enough—her dad helped her cut the shape out of cardboard three times, so she could stick them all together. She had spent the whole weekend painting it, trying to get the lion’s head just right, though she thinks it still looks a little wonky. She even put gold glitter on the hilt, and glued on a plastic ruby she found at the craft store. But it’s nothing compared to a replica from the museum. She’d been asking her dad for an Oathkeeper for the past year—the nice one that looked like real metal, not just the cheap plastic one for all the other kids that didn’t know _any_ stories about historical Westerosi weapons. She’d been hoping she’d get it for her birthday next month.

Brienne can’t believe Jaime just went out and _bought_ one over the weekend. Like he was just getting a chocolate bar from the store. Okay, it’s Widow’s Wail, not Oathkeeper, but _still_.

Jaime doesn’t seem to care about any of that, though. He’s still looking at her handmade Oathkeeper like it’s the best thing in the world. Like it’s the perfect match for the one strapped to his backpack.

“Hey, Brie,” Jaime says, enthusiastically. “We should do show-and-tell together! Both our swords came from the same blade, you know?”

Brienne feels slightly offended by his comment. “Of course I know _that_, Jaime.” Who does he think she is? Just some average eight-year-old who doesn’t spend every other weekend looking at weapons in the King’s Landing Museum? “I… I have a script.” She holds out the paper she’s been gripping in her hand since she left the house this morning.

Jaime shrugs. “You can follow your script. I was just going to say whatever. Maybe we can do a sword fight at the end, wouldn’t that be brilliant?”

Brienne remembers their last three show-and-tells, which Jaime did with his twin sister Cersei. He always looked very bored, but she thought they had agreed to do them together, or something.

“What’s Cersei talking about?” she asks, looking across the playground to his sister, who seems to be trying very hard to ignore their presence.

“Dunno,” Jaime says, as he shuffles his feet. “She got mad that I got a sword and she didn’t. She hasn’t said anything to me for three days.”

Brienne doesn’t much understand the twins. She knows Cersei hates her. She doesn’t know why, but most of the kids make fun of her, anyway, for being so tall and having so many freckles. So it’s not really that big of a deal that Cersei doesn’t want to talk to her. Brienne likes talking to Jaime, though. Even more so now that she’s discovered he likes swords too. But most days, Jaime and Cersei are joined at the hip, and Brienne doesn’t get to talk to Jaime at all. Then there are those few days, like today, when Cersei seems to pretend Jaime doesn’t exist.

Brienne doesn’t much understand the twins. But she really wants to be Jaime’s friend. Jaime doesn’t care so much that she’s tall and has lots of freckles. Well, he used to, for the first couple of months, but he doesn’t anymore.

So she agrees to his request. “Okay then. We can do show-and-tell together.”

“Even the sword fight?” Jaime pushes, eagerly.

“Fine,” she agrees, holding back her smile. “But you can’t hit too hard, okay? Mine’s made out of cardboard.”

“I won’t, I promise!”

//////////

“I can’t believe she didn’t even let us get to the sword fight,” Jaime groans at recess.

Brienne is just upset she didn’t even get halfway through her script. “You’re the one who started with the whole thing about how they chopped off Eddard Stark’s head!”

“But that’s one of the most exciting parts!” Jaime insists.

“You don’t _tell_ them that, Jaime,” she says, as she stomps towards the swings. “Adults think it’s _inappropriate_.” Brienne recalls a lecture she received once, from one of her dad’s ex-girlfriends. She’s glad he broke up with her.

Jaime’s following close behind; she can hear his footsteps. She’s not sure why, but it makes her think of how he follows Cersei around, most days.

“Are you mad at me, Brie?” he calls out.

“Yes! No! I don’t know!” She stops, takes a deep breath to calm herself down like her dad taught her, and turns around. Jaime is standing right there, looking very sorry.

“I spent a long time making Oathkeeper, Jaime,” Brienne says, helplessly.

“Don’t be mad, Brie.” He takes one of her hands in his. “At least we’re getting our swords back at the end of the day.”

“Yeah, I guess.” She wriggles her hand out of his grasp. Brienne wants to be Jaime’s friend, but she still needs to figure out if she minds him holding her hand.

She’s about to turn back and head to the swings when Jaime asks: “What are you doing after school?”

“... Nothing,” she answers, tentatively. “Why?”

He flashes her a grin. “Sword fight at the park?”

Brienne supposes that can’t hurt, can it? She’s still a bit mad at him, but at least she gets to fight him. At least she gets to be his friend. Maybe she can ask him what else he knows about historical Westerosi weapons.

“Alright. As long as you don’t hit too hard,” she reminds him.

“I won’t,” he replies, just like he did this morning. “I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, they’re just not going to acknowledge who owned those swords, because that’s too much for me for a fic about two 8-year-olds failing at show-and-tell.
> 
> gemikanxiii over on Tumblr did some [amazing fan art](https://gemikanxiii.tumblr.com/post/188407935884/inspired-by-shipping-receiving-s-fictober) for this story!


	16. “Listen. No, really listen.” (Office AU Part 3)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do I not give the people what they want? 95% of this doesn't happen in the office though, so is it even still an office AU?

_This is a mistake_, Brienne thinks for the hundredth time since she woke up this morning, as she waits for Jaime at the ferry terminal. Why the hells is she bringing him to Tarth? It’s too soon. She still has no clue what exactly is happening between them that would make this too soon, but she just knows it’s _too soon_.

Fine, so it’s the fourth straight weekend she’s been showing him around the Stormlands. She’d started off with Storm’s End, of course. Brienne isn’t that much of an expert on the castle’s history, beyond what they had to learn in high school, but Renly was a distant descendant of House Baratheon—not that the Great Houses still existed, or held castles—and he had told her a few good stories that had been passed down through generations.

“You’re close to Renly, then,” Jaime had commented, when she told him about her source.

“Oh, I guess so. But we’re just friends.” And then she had winced, because why the fuck did that last part matter?

Jaime just smiled at her appreciatively, like it actually _did_ matter. “Good to know,” he had said. Again with that phrase. But he didn’t say much else after that on the subject. That first weekend, she found that Jaime was talkative, even funny, when he wasn’t just greeting her with her name at her cubicle. But he was also talkative in a way that seemed as if he was trying to _avoid_ having to talk. _Really_ talk. Not that Brienne expected them to _really_ talk this first weekend, even if they had been doing that dance in the office for weeks. In real terms, she was still just his employee.

There were a handful of other great castles left standing around the Stormlands that were all worth visiting, but for the second weekend Brienne had thought it was best to shift gears. She drove them to a charming small town about an hour out of the city, thinking it would be a nice place to spend the day, and it was, mostly. When they found themselves walking through a farmers’ market, however, it had suddenly felt far too domestic. It’s just the second weekend of sightseeing, Gods, not even a second_ date_. They hadn’t even had a _first_ date. Storm’s End didn’t count if there was no written or verbal agreement between both parties on its date-ness. Nothing had even changed, in the office. The dance continued, that was all. Fine, so they were texting more often, and Brienne was extremely glad that she sat with her back to Margaery. That woman had an eagle eye for people who smiled at their phones too much.

Brienne might have brisk walked through that farmers’ market a little too quickly as she thought these thoughts. Jaime was in no such hurry, though, and seemed keen to indulge some kind of latent obsession he had with sampling cheese. At least, she had assumed it was just about _sampling_ cheese. By the time he had reached her at the end of the market, he was carrying six different blocks of cheese in his arms.

The third weekend, Brienne thought she should pick something safe. Safe and undomestic. They could go to the art museum. Art museums are safe. Art museums are educational. Art museums are sometimes even puzzling, but they had interesting objects in them, and they’d be spending all their time looking at those interesting objects, and reading words that described those interesting objects. Except it just so happened that Jaime quite likes art, in a way that Brienne found refreshing. He could speak reverently about sculptures she thought were quite confusing, and even, frankly, hideous. But he also had no qualms about making fun of serious old paintings, especially the ones with more anatomically questionable depictions of the Seven. 

Art museums are not safe, Brienne decided. Jaime was _opening her mind_ and _making her laugh_ and Brienne was starting to _really_ feel things inside her. They weren’t even on a _date_. There was no written or verbal agreement between both parties.

Then, at the end of that afternoon, Jaime had asked her if they could do something different next weekend, experience more of the region’s unspoiled nature, maybe. “Oh, let’s go to Tarth!” she had said, without even thinking. “We can take the first ferry out in the morning, and the last ferry back at night. It’ll be a long day, but doable, I think.”

“Your father still lives on Tarth, doesn’t he?” was Jaime’s first question, and Brienne progressed to a full-blown blush in record time. She hadn’t really thought about that—Jaime said ‘nature’ and she just immediately thought ‘Tarth’—but there was something in Jaime’s voice that told her he was amused at her suggestion.

“... He does,” she replied. “But he’s busy next weekend.” He wasn’t. “And I just saw him last month.” She sees him almost every month, actually, so she was due for another visit. “We don’t have to see him.” That was just making it weirder than it had to be.

“Of course,” Jaime said, and he wasn’t just _sounding_ amused, he was also _looking_ amused. “I was just asking. I’d love to go to Tarth.”

And so they are going to Tarth. Jaime shows up at the ferry terminal just a few minutes past their agreed time. It’s a clear day in the Stormlands, rare even for this time of year, so they sit on the upper deck of the ferry, and can’t speak much above the strong winds of Shipbreaker Bay. Brienne tries her hardest not to formulate any opinions on how the wind is having its way with Jaime’s loose white button-up shirt, although he seems to have forgotten that those first three buttons aren’t just for decoration. He’s rolled his sleeves up past his elbows, and she tries her hardest not to formulate any opinions on his forearms, either.

As they disembark the ferry, they walk past a signboard that says, grandly, **WELCOME TO TARTH**, and in cursive script below, _The Sapphire Isle_. Jaime points at it and remarks, “They’ve been calling it that for centuries, haven’t they?”

“Yeah. Maybe even for millennia. It’s for the blue of its waters.”

“It’s not a reference to the eyes, then.”

Brienne looks at him quizzically. “What eyes?”

“Your eyes.” He lifts a finger pointlessly in the direction of her face. “The Tarth eyes. I assume it’s a family trait. They’re very blue.”

“Oh. Um. Thank you?” Why did she _thank _him? He was just stating a fact. She does have very blue eyes, and they are a Tarth trait. The one trait she’s always been glad she inherited.

“You’re welcome,” Jaime says, anyway, with that half-smile of his.

They spend the rest of the day on the western coast, mostly, where the ruins of Evenfall Hall still stand. The island isn’t particularly big, and it’s easy enough to take the bus along the main roads, and explore the island from there. Her childhood home, where her father still lives, is on the eastern coast, so she can sidestep the intimacy of showing Jaime that part of her life. Her father _did _turn out to be busy this weekend, anyway, so she doesn’t have to feel so guilty about coming to the island without telling him.

In the late afternoon, Brienne brings Jaime to a secluded meadow in the northwest. It’s close enough to the sea, and they’ll be able to watch the sunset in an hour or so, too. She used to go there as a kid, she tells Jaime, when she wanted to be alone. She doesn’t tell him that it was to get away from the cruelty of the other kids. 

They lie in the grass, and look up at the sky. There is an intimacy in this, though it’s not the same intimacy of him seeing her childhood home, of meeting her father. Brienne pushes away the thought that this might be even more intimate than those things.

“Listen, Jaime,” she tells him. It’s what she used to do when she came here as a child. Just close her eyes and listen to everything except her own thoughts.

He does, for a while. “It’s nice,” he says eventually. “It’s quiet.”

_Well, those are certainly adjectives._ She shouldn’t have expected more from a man who spent most of his life in the city of King’s Landing, with all the noises of the urban environment that people there learn to ignore. “No, _really_ listen,” Brienne urges. “Close your eyes and listen.”

Jaime stays silent for a long time. Finally, he speaks again. “I can hear the grass rustling in the wind. Birds, talking to each other in the trees back there. The waves, that’s distant, but I can hear it, I think. And your breathing.” Brienne’s eyes fly open at the last one, but Jaime just continues. “No traffic. No fingers typing away on keyboards, or pens scratching on paper, or the whirring of copy machines. And coffee machines, I suppose.” She hears the smile in his voice, at that little rhyme. 

“No arguments,” he says, the smile disappearing. “No expectations.”

Brienne turns over to lie on her side, facing him. Somehow, those words give her the courage to ask the question that’s been on her mind since the stairwell incident. She’s going to hope he talks. _Really_ talks. She wants him to talk to her. She wants to listen.

“You were supposed to go back to King’s Landing, weren’t you? Why did you decide to stay?”

“Long story,” he says to the sky. “My family—it’s complicated. My father wants me to take over the company, some day, even though my brother is much better at all of this.” Tyrion, if Brienne remembers correctly. Nicknamed the Imp as much for his quick wit as for his height. “My sister isn’t too happy about my father’s decision, not that she wants my brother in the running at all. Just her and her _new husband_.” Jaime says this bitterly, and Brienne is reminded of that strange intensity she heard in his phone call with Cersei. “She was pushing me for it, at first. She’s my twin, you know, and we used to do everything together. She thought that she’d be able to gain control through me, if my father won’t give it to her.” 

He turns toward her now. “I don’t want any of it, Brienne. I’m good at my job—I don’t enjoy it, but I’m good at it, and I’m not sure what else I could do, anyway. But I don’t want control of the entire company.” He picks at the grass between them. “Cersei finally got that in her head. So she went and found someone with more ambition. But my father doesn’t want her husband to inherit the business, even though the man even offered to take the Lannister name.” 

Jaime sighs, and he seems to be somewhere quite far away. “It’s a mess, back in King’s Landing, Brienne. I don’t even know how long I can stay in the Stormlands, before my father finds a way to force me back.”

He lies there for a while, still facing her. Then, all of a sudden, he sits up. “I’m sorry,” he says, without looking back. “You probably didn’t want to hear all of that.”

Brienne shifts herself so she’s sitting beside him. “I don’t know if I can give you any advice at all, Jaime. But I’m happy to listen, whenever you need to talk.” She nudges him with her elbow. “I’m not just a tour guide, you know.”

He smiles that half-smile again. “Hey. Can I ask you a question, too?”

“Of course.”

“How did that whole thing get started? About you thinking I look average?”

_Not this again._ “Why are you so obsessed with that?” Brienne laughs.

“I’m just interested in the backstory, that’s all.” Jaime’s whole demeanour is shifting. Brienne can see the familiar self-confidence return, a bit of that arrogance he saves for the office, though she’s realising now that it might just be something for him to hide behind. “I was surprised to hear it. I happen to think I’m quite good-looking.”

Okay, she was feeling quite sorry for him a minute ago, but now she can’t help but roll her eyes. “Who _are_ you? Who even says that about themselves?”

“Answer the question, Brienne,” he grins.

“Everyone was talking about it, okay?” she groans. “Your looks. All day, every day. It was too much. I was just really annoyed one morning, because of…” She doesn’t really want to get into the details of that morning, actually. “Bottom line, I just didn’t want to hear it anymore. So I said it to shut people up. Then it got out of hand.”

“Because of…?” he probes.

_Alright, fine._ “I don’t have a _chauffeur_ to get me to work, Jaime. I take a bus, then a train, then the shuttle. I missed all three of those that morning. And then I was all sweaty and gross and I passed you in the hallway and you gave me a look—”

_Oh fuck. _Brienne had said too much. She hadn’t wanted to talk about the _look_.

“Oh.” There’s a glimmer of recognition in Jaime’s eye. “I remember that.”

_He does?_ “You do?”

“Yeah. I think so. You were all flustered, I remember, and your hair was a mess.”

_Oh great, _that’s_ why he remembers. _“Thanks a _lot_ for that.” Brienne hides her head in her knees. “I don’t really need the recap, Jaime.”

“Don’t interrupt while I’m reminiscing, _Bridget_,” he teases. “I remember it because it was the first time I thought, ‘She has nice eyes.’”

Brienne just starts laughing into her knees out of shock.

“I’m serious!” Jaime insists.

“_That_ was your takeaway?” She lifts her head. “I looked like a _disaster_, Jaime. I distinctly remember going to the bathroom right after and thinking that I looked like a _disaster_.”

“As I recall, you were wearing that blue blouse that matches your eyes. They were all _wide_, and your cheeks were all flushed and it just, I don’t know, made them stand out. I guess that’s why I gave you a _look_.”

_He can’t possibly mean what he’s saying._ “You _basically_ said I was ugly at the office party, Jaime,” Brienne reminds him. Or perhaps it’s more of a reminder to herself.

Jaime holds both his hands up in surrender. “Again, I’m very sorry about that.”

“It’s fine,” she says, lightly, and nudges him again. “I punched you already.”

“I was drunk, anyway, not that it’s an excuse.” He lies back down on the grass. “Pissed off about my family as usual. And, I think, a little hurt that the tall one with the nice blue eyes thought I only looked _average_.”

There’s something in those words that makes Brienne want to fly into a panic, even after all the dancing, even after the past four weekends. No, she refuses to jump to any conclusions. It’s a much better option to just—stand up abruptly.

“Where are you going?” Jaime asks from the grass. “Can’t we stay here a while longer?”

Brienne looks at the sky, and sees the sun making its way towards the horizon. She thanks it silently for giving her a reason to walk away from this place, this small patch of meadow where Jaime’s spilled one too many truths for today. She doesn’t want to think of them as truths, really. Not that last part. Not yet.

“Get up, Jaime,” and she offers him her hand. “Or we’re going to miss the sunset.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There I go again, leaving an open ending.


	17. “There is just something about them/her/him.” (Zombie Apocalypse AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We all know you're only here for the Office AU by now, but I'm sure as hell going to keep trying to come up with other bizarre scenarios for these two idiots.

“Jaime.”

No response.

“_Jaime._”

Still no response. And the man is standing right there, as he has been for the past fifteen minutes while Brienne has been attempting to run him through their agenda for the day, except he’s just—staring out their peephole. Well, it was a bullet hole, actually, but it served as a peephole for them now. Can’t have windows, these days.

“JAIME!”

“Hmm?” Jaime replies, absently.

Brienne sighs. “Have you been listening to me at all?”

“Supermarket with Podrick, I heard you, B.”

She’s given up on getting him to call her Brienne. It was her own fault, really. She was the one who didn’t trust him with anything more than an initial when she first met him on the road.

“We’ve practically cleared the place out. We’ll have to move on to another location soon. I’m going to plot out some possible routes and we can discuss them when you’re back.”

“Mmm, sure, babe.”

“Don’t call me that.” _Babe_ was infinitely worse than B. Just because they’ve finally started sleeping together doesn’t mean he has to call her _babe_. Brienne is very much not a _babe_.

“Okay, babe.”

Did he forget that she carries two guns and three knives on her at all times? Ooh, there’s also that baseball bat they found last week. So many potential ways to stop Jaime from calling her ‘babe’.

“You know, you’re being very nonchalant about our survival this morning, Jaime.”

“We’ll figure it out,” he shrugs.

“We’ve almost died about fifty-five times each in the past six months. I do think at some point we may not just ‘figure it out’.”

“I think you’ll find, B, that the tally is forty-six for me, and fifty-nine for you.” He still hasn’t even so much as turned around, but she can just _imagine_ his self-satisfied smirk. “And about seventy-five for Podrick in the three months since we picked him up. Check the board.”

“You lost two-and-a-half fingers! On your _right_ hand!” And she’d lost half her cheek, but at least her cheek had no bearing on how well she could fire a gun.

“Still counts as only one time that I almost died. And the fact that I’ve almost died less times than you even after losing two-and-a-half fingers and could barely fight off anything for a month should really be a testament to me.”

“I think it should be a testament to how many times I’ve had to preemptively save your ass. I deserve at least twenty off that ridiculous tally for keeping you alive.”

“Oh, you save my _ass_ for your own benefit.”

Before she can think of a retort—she’s sharp enough, usually, but she spent a couple seconds too long thinking about how she does quite like his ass—Jaime waves her over with a “Hey, come look at this.”

_Fine, let’s see what’s been keeping him so occupied this morning._

“Look. There.” He motions through the peephole.

Brienne puts her eye up to opening. Everything looks normal to her, as normal as it could be in the apocalypse, anyway. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

“That one. Over by the tree.”

She casts her eyes to the lone zombie currently amusing itself by circling a dead tree.

“Do you think it’s one of Stoneheart’s?” she asks. As if regular zombies aren’t bad enough, they’ve heard whispers of a band of zombies controlled by some kind of sentient undead leader.

“No, I don’t think so,” Jaime mumbles.

“What about it, then? It looks like every other zombie, Jaime.” Decomposing, shambling, probably groaning and stinking too, not that she can hear or smell it from over here.

“Does it? There’s just something about him. I can’t quite put my finger on it.”

So Jaime’s been looking out this peephole for the past fifteen minutes, just so he can fail to put his finger on whatever it is about this zombie that’s disturbing him.

“Are you even sure it’s a _him_?” Brienne squints at the figure in the distance. “Aren’t they all just ‘its’ these days?

“I think it’s a him. There’s something about his hair that seems familiar.”

His _hair_? The zombie had barely any hair left, if he even had a full head of it when he was fully human.

“Oh!” Jaime exclaims and bangs his hand on the wall, so loudly that Brienne’s instincts fire into action, and she suddenly finds herself with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other.

“Fucking hells, Jaime, do you _want_ me to blast your head off?”

“I think it’s Hyle Hunt!”

“What?”

“You know, the guy you were travelling with when we met.”

“Yes, Jaime, I’m aware who Hyle Hunt is.” Or _was._ Or _is_? If that zombie is Hyle, should she be using present tense? “And we were _all_ travelling together for three months after that, Jaime.” They’d lost track of Hyle around the time they found Podrick, actually. They’d been fending off a horde of zombies, as one does in a zombie apocalypse. Brienne and Jaime had managed to escape to their safe house, but Hyle never appeared, even though they were camped there for another week.

“I’d prefer to characterise those three months as ‘tolerating’ Hyle rather than ‘travelling with’ Hyle, as you know.”

“And I was tolerating _both_ of you.” Those had been the longest three months of her life, and it had not been due to the presence of any zombies.

“He was just so… useless. And annoying. And he just wanted to get in your pants.”

“I was handling that part fine,” Brienne shot back. “You’re only mad about that because _you_ wanted to get in my pants.”

“And did I not succeed where he failed?”

That was a gross oversimplification of what happened between them. There were lost fingers and lost cheeks involved, for fuck’s sake. And _feelings_ and whatnot. But Brienne doesn’t want to get into another argument with Jaime right now. She just wants him to make that trip to the supermarket and come back here, without adding to his or Podrick’s almost-died tally in the process.

“I don’t care if it _is_ him, alright? He’s a zombie, now, anyway. Will you just shoot him on your way to the supermarket, please?”

“Gladly.”


	18. “Secrets? I love secrets.” (Office AU Part 4)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming, since Day 12 at least. I’ve decided that in this story, Brienne is about 25, and Jaime is about 33 or 34 (the whole taking over the company thing is only going to happen years into the future, but we all know Tywin is a planner). I’m a fan of making book!canon age difference work in modern AUs, but I imagine Brienne has been working for Lannister Corp for a while now, so I aged her up a few years.
> 
> Anyway, the ages also partly matter because they exchange a few texts, and I thought it was necessary to add in a couple of emoji. Just a heads up that if you’re reading this in a format that can’t display emoji, or you can’t see them for any other reason, their texts might just read as more… emotionless. But I do describe the emoji in the text itself, all except one, which I’ll describe in the end notes.

**Hey. Just found out a client is in town this weekend, so I’ll have to work on Sat. Are you free Sun?**

Brienne has been staring at that notification on her phone for the past five minutes. She hasn’t opened the message—doesn’t want Jaime to see that she’s seen it. She isn’t free on Sunday, in fact; she’s cancelled on Margaery twice already, and she’s feeling guilty enough about it as it is. She’s also running out of excuses, considering she doesn’t exactly have many friends or commitments outside of work, and Margaery is well aware of that. Although, Brienne has a feeling that if Margaery knew the real reason behind those cancellations, she would gladly revoke any and all appointments for the foreseeable future.

Anyway, Margaery’s coming over to her apartment to hang out on Sunday afternoon, and that’s that. She isn’t going to change her plans for Jaime, not this weekend. Something in Brienne tells her she _should_ be feeling disappointed. She enjoys spending time with him, doesn’t she? Every text from him makes her feel much more joy than a few words in a digital bubble truly had a right to make her feel. But she finds that what this particular message makes her feel is—

_relief_.

And now, in addition to feeling guilty about cancelling on Margaery—which she will be rectifying by _not_ cancelling on Margaery—she is feeling guilty about feeling relieved about not meeting Jaime, though meeting Jaime generally makes her feel happy, beneath all her nervousness. 

It’s all very confusing.

Last weekend, Jaime had told her about his family. He had told her that he thinks she has nice blue eyes. He had told her that he felt hurt when he thought she didn’t think he was much to look at. He had told her that he was listening to the sound of her breathing as they lay side-by-side in her favourite meadow. And perhaps most crucially, he had told her all these things while he was wearing a loose white shirt with the top three buttons left unbuttoned, and the sleeves rolled up to his elbows to expose his forearms.

It was all so… _much. _Other women—women Jaime has probably dated before—they might have felt flattered. They might have seized those opportunities, if Brienne was even right in thinking they were opportunities. They might not have stood up abruptly from an intimate conversation and thanked the sun for setting just in time. They might have _kissed _him, right there on the grass. Brienne had thought about that. She really had. Part of her really did want to kiss him, right there on the grass. Part of her wants to walk into his office right now and do that very thing.

Yet the idea of kissing him—it doesn’t make her feel happy, or excited, or passionate, or all these things she thinks she’s supposed to feel. And it isn’t about whether it would be her first, though it would. She’s twenty-five, never kissed anyone or been kissed by anyone, but she’s quite gotten over that already, frankly. It’s just a fact of her existence. 

It’s just, the idea of kissing _Jaime_. Something about that just feels so—monumental. Like everything in her life would change if she just does that one thing, with this one person. It already feels like everything in her life is changing, just because she had _punched him in the face_. To _kiss_ him—Jaime—it’s—Gods—it’s _overwhelming_.

So Brienne doesn’t want to change her plans. She doesn’t want to see Jaime this weekend. She wants, for some reason, to talk to Margaery. To tell Margaery everything that’s happened so far. She knows it’s going to be trying—Margaery is… well, excitable is one word for it. Perhaps Margaery will feel all the excitement Brienne is _supposed_ to be feeling, but can’t seem to. Regardless, Brienne just wants to get out of her own head. She’s been trapped in her own head about this for far too long. 

(There is, of course, the option of just _talking_ to Jaime. But she’s not ready for that quite yet.)

She taps on the notification, finally, and replies: **I’m meeting Margaery on Sunday. Sorry 😕**

Slanted mouth face is good, right? It’s not as revealing as a sad face, but enough to convey at least some disappointment.

Jaime’s reply comes soon enough:** Next weekend then 😔**

Great. Sad face. And it’s the most pathetic-looking of all the sad face options save the ones with actual tears. Now she’s feeling guilty again. But Brienne has made her choice, so she pushes that away, and concentrates on the relief.

(Later, when Jaime walks by her cubicle, he gives her a kind of sad smile. There’s no emoji for that. She wants to bang her head on the table.)

Saturday rolls around, and for the first time in five Saturdays, Brienne isn’t spending the day with Jaime. He’s not even texting her—probably busy with the client, she supposes. By the end of the day, she’s not sure if she feels relief anymore. She was just at the gym in the morning, but she heads there again. She wants to sweat out some of that regret.

(After her second workout of the day, she looks at her reflection. Eyes wide, cheeks flushed to make the blue stand out, Jaime had said. She wants to bang her head on the mirror.)

Sunday morning, at least, could be spent grocery shopping and preparing lunch for herself and Margaery. By some miracle, she manages to keep it all together through their meal, pretend everything is as it always is. Brienne stands in her kitchen after, silently watching Margaery make a pot of tea, trying her hardest to figure out how to start this conversation. When Margaery pours her a cup and hands it to her, she almost drops it, as if she’d forgotten how to use her fingers.

“What’s going on with you, Brienne?” Margaery asks. “You’ve been acting weird through the whole of lunch. Well, for weeks, actually.”

_Okay, guess I wasn’t really keeping it all together._

“Marg,” Brienne begins, “I need to tell you something.” She motions Margaery towards her couch. “You might want to sit down for this.” I _might want to sit down for this._

“Oh. My. Gods. Brienne.” Margaery somehow manages to bounce over without spilling her cup of tea. “Are you finally going to tell me about your sordid affair with Jaime Lannister? I want to know _all_ the details, _please._ Sexual positions, everything.”

_Seven hells_. Brienne knew this was going to happen. She really needs more friends. “There is no—there isn’t a _sordid affair_. There are definitely no _sexual positions_.”

Margaery can’t seem to decide if she wants to look disappointed or disbelieving. “What’s with the whole back-and-forth in the office then? And the texting?”

Brienne almost drops her cup again. Perhaps it’s safest to put it on the coffee table. “How do you know about the _texting_?”

“Aha! So you _have_ been texting Jaime Lannister.” She gives Brienne her smug look, as if she doesn’t permanently have one plastered on her face anyway. “I didn’t know for sure, but now I do.”

“Damn it, Marg,” Brienne sighs. “If you want me to tell you anything, you have to promise to keep it a secret. And you know how you are with secrets.”

“Secrets?” she repeats, all false innocence, setting her own cup down carefully. “I _love_ secrets.”

“You love _hearing_ secrets, Margaery. You love _telling_ those secrets to other people. I’m asking you to _keep_ a secret right now.”

“Fine,” Margaery rolls her eyes. “I’ll try my best.”

Brienne supposes that Margaery’s ‘best’ will have to do. She takes a deep breath, squeezes her eyes shut, and plugs her fingers in her ears, just to prepare herself for Margaery’s reaction.

“IhavebeengoingoutwithJaimeforthepastfourweekends,” she blurts out, and cracks open one eye.

_I’m sorry? _Brienne sees Margaery mouth at her, and she takes one finger out of one ear. “Could you repeat that _slowly_, Brienne?” Margaery says.

Brienne plugs her finger back into her ear, and enunciates very slowly: “I. Have. Been. Going. Out. With. Jaime. For. The. Past. Four. Weekends.”

And then, as expected, Margaery shrieks. 

When she’s gotten that out of her system, she plants her two hands on Brienne’s cheeks. “What the _fuck_. You _are_ having a sordid affair! Good for you, Brienne!”

“Again, there is _no sordid affair_,” she manages to say, despite Margaery squishing her face together. She grabs Margaery’s wrists and pushes her hands away from her face. “I mean ‘going out’ in the most basic sense. We go… out. They’re not _dates_. He asked me to show him around the Stormlands a few weeks ago.”

“He asked you _personally_? And you’ve been doing this for _four weekends straight_?” Margaery has that half-disappointed, half-disbelieving look again. “How could they _not_ be dates? What have you been _doing_ exactly?”

“The first weekend, we went to Storm’s End.”

“Okay, not my first choice for a date, but I guess an old castle _can _be romantic.”

“I didn’t _mean_ for it to be romantic,” Brienne groans. “It’s _the_ castle of the Stormlands, Marg. The city we live in was literally built in its shadow. It’s the first stop on the list for any tourist.”

Margaery shrugs. “I just ignore it, most days. How about the next weekend?”

“We drove out to Bronzegate—”

“Not _another _castle!” Margaery interrupts. “Unless of course Jaime _loves_ castles. Then bring him to _every_ castle.” 

The way Margaery said that last bit seemed to suggest they should be doing much more at castles than just wandering around with the audio guide included in the admission price, but Brienne valiantly ignores that implication. “We didn’t go to the castle. We just went to one of the small towns _near_ Bronzegate.”

“What did you even _do_?” 

“Um. He bought a lot of cheese?”

“... Okay. Maybe let’s move on to the third weekend.”

“Art museum.”

“Ooh, very sexy. Lots of naked bodies.” Margaery’s eyes seem almost to glaze over as she says, “I bet you Jaime Lannister’s built like some of those sculptures underneath that very well-tailored suit.”

“Seven hells, Marg.” Brienne shoves the image of Jaime in his half-unbuttoned white shirt out of her mind yet again. “We actually spent more time with the modern and contemporary art. Less naked bodies, more… shapes. Everyday objects.”

“Hmm. Boring.”

“They’re really interesting, actually, Jaime’s very good at talking about—”

Brienne stops herself there as a sly smile forms on Margaery’s face. “Ooh, Jaime’s very good, is he?”

“Will you stop reading or inserting innuendos into everything, please?”

Margaery puts a hand to her chest in mock offence. “As my friend, Brienne, you shouldn’t be asking me to go against my nature. How about the fourth weekend then?”

Brienne takes another deep breath. “Don’t freak out, but… I brought him to Tarth.”

“_You brought him to Tarth?”_ Margaery practically shrieks. Again.

“I just _told_ you not to freak out. It wasn’t a big deal.” _It was a big deal._ “He wanted to see some nature and that was my first thought!”

“Brienne, you brought him to _your_ island.” Great, Margaery’s hands are squishing her cheeks together again.

“You say that like my family still owns the island,” Brienne reminds her, as she pushes her hands away, “which we haven’t in maybe five centuries, Marg.”

“I _mean_, Brienne, you grew up there. You love that place. It’s like you’re giving him a part of your _soul_.” _Well, that’s a bit dramatic, but at least she moved on from the sexual positions._ “Oh my gods, your _father_ lives on Tarth,” Margaery gasps. “Did you bring Jaime to _meet your dad_?”

“Of course not,” Brienne says, exasperatedly. “Why would I bring my boss to meet my dad?!”

“At this point, Brienne, I think calling him your boss is a tiny bit inaccurate, don’t you think?”

“What should I call him, then?”

Margaery pauses to think for a moment. “Your… man friend.”

“My _man friend_?” Brienne’s brow could not be more furrowed. “What the hells is that?”

“He has to be _at least_ a friend by now, even if he’s not a _boy_friend. And he’s one of the gold standards of the male specimen.” Margaery looks like she’s salivating, Maiden save her.

“Gross,” Brienne replies, even as she curses her brain for bringing back the image of Jaime in the white shirt for the ninety-second time today.

“Please tell me you brought him to your favourite meadow and kissed him passionately,” Margaery pleads.

“I brought him to my favourite meadow—” Margaery’s eyes are wide with anticipation— “and _didn’t_ kiss him passionately.”

And Margaery’s face falls. “Well, what did you do, then?”

“We talked. Well, _he_ talked. About personal stuff.” Brienne suspects Margaery probably knows much more than she does about Lannister Corp power struggles, seeing as she’s worked in the main office at King’s Landing before, but she definitely doesn’t want to betray Jaime’s confidence. “And then he asked me about the thing I said,” Brienne mumbles.

“What thing?”

“You know. About how I thought he looks average. Which I don’t, obviously.” She was born with eyes.

“I knew you were lying about that. Wait, you’re telling me he actually cares?”

“... He might have told me that it _hurt_ him.”

“Why?” Margaery is as confused as Brienne was. Or still is. “That is a man who knows _exactly_ how good-looking he is.”

Brienne covers her face with her hands. She’s been going over Jaime’s exact words in her mind ever since he said them. “He didn’t exactly say_ why_. He just said, ‘I was a little hurt that the tall one with the nice blue eyes thought I only looked _average_.’ That’s—that’s weird, right?”

And then there’s just silence. Brienne separates her fingers slowly, to see Margaery looking at her with a strange expression on her face.

“Brienne, I want you to think very hard right now about anything else he’s said that might have seemed _weird_ to you.”

She wants to tell herself that she has to rummage through her memory for these examples, but the fact is she’s already far too prepared. “Well, it wasn’t the first time he’s asked me about that whole thing. He asked me after the meeting with HR, if I really thought he looked average. And I said no, and then he said ‘Good to know.’”

Margaery is nodding her head vigorously right now, and it’s very unsettling. “What else?” 

“And then, I may have stupidly said something like, ‘Renly’s just a friend’, and he _also _said, ‘Good to know.’”

Margaery is letting out a very bizarre high-pitched hum. “What else?”

“The thing about my eyes being blue. It was probably the fifth time that day that he mentioned that. He just kept… slipping it into conversation. We talked about how Tarth is known as the Sapphire Isle, and he asked if it was because of my eyes.”

Margaery claps her hands around Brienne’s shoulders. When she does this, it somehow always makes Brienne very conscious of how broad her frame is, but now it’s far more disconcerting because Margaery is giving her the most direct stare in the history of direct stares.

“So what did you do with Jaime Lannister this weekend, Brienne?”

“... N-nothing,” Brienne stammers. “I—I didn’t meet him.”

“Why the hells not?!”

Gods, Brienne forgets sometimes that Margaery can be really scary when she wants to be. She shrugs her shoulders out of Margaery’s grip. “He had to work, yesterday! And you were planning on coming over today.”

“I would have _gladly_ not come here if I had known _any_ of this.”

“I know, okay? But I was—I needed some space. From Jaime.” Brienne grabs a cushion from her couch and buries her face in it.

“For Gods’ sakes, why? He _likes_ you, Brienne. I’m sure he does.”

“I like him too.” Brienne has to say it into the cushion, because she feels like she might start crying if she hears those words said out loud from her own mouth. She brings the cushion down and hugs it tightly. “It’s just… so many _feelings_.” She doesn’t know how to articulate it to Margaery in any other way. “And what if it’s all just some big joke?” She’s been the butt of a joke before, a cruel one, though she’s never told Margaery all the details. “What if I’m just—something to help him pass the time until he has to go back to King’s Landing?”

“I don’t think it’s a _joke_, Brienne,” Margaery says, gently. “He wouldn’t have spent four weekends with you if it was all a _joke_. And even if that last part were true, you’re enjoying that spending all that time with him, aren’t you?”

Brienne nods.

“Won’t you allow yourself some happiness, Brienne? No matter how long it lasts?”

And then she _has_ to bury her face in the cushion again, because she _is_ going to cry. 

Brienne had learned, long ago, how not to cry in the face of cruelty. She had learned it by walling herself away—from everything, even from things and people that were _not_ cruel. She may have even learned it by inflicting cruelty on herself first, before others could do it to her. 

But kindness—the kindness Margaery has shown her with just a few words, the kindness Margaery is asking her to show _herself_—that is another matter altogether.

Their tea has gone cold, by then, and Margaery gets up to makes them another pot while Brienne calms down. Brienne doesn’t want to talk about Jaime anymore after that, not for the rest of the afternoon. They watch a movie instead, something funny and distinctly unromantic. Brienne thinks of Jaime anyway. 

Margaery finally leaves around five, but not before giving Brienne a big hug, and suggesting to her yet again that she might want to get around to starting that sordid affair, _with_ sexual positions involved. Brienne just blushes and laughs, this time.

When she’s back on her couch, Brienne checks her phone for the first time since Margaery arrived. Jaime hasn’t said much, but he’s sent her some photos from their trip to Tarth. He’s been sending them to her all week. There’s one in this batch, though, with her standing in the grass, in the distance, blue sky all around her. She doesn’t know what it is about this image, but she finds she doesn’t feel that discomfort she usually feels when she looks at photos of herself.

**Hey, **Brienne types, before she can ruin it by thinking too hard about it.** I know this is really last minute. But are you free for dinner tonight? **

She looks at the message for a while, and considers adding some comment about it being their sightseeing for this weekend. But she decides against it. She won’t frame it as that. She wants to have dinner with him, just dinner. If he interprets it as a date, then he does. 

Brienne turns the screen off immediately after sending it. She wants to put her phone down, walk away from it to make herself another cup of tea, just so she doesn’t sit there just waiting for his reply. 

But before she can even move, her phone screen lights back up again.

**Definitely. Pick you up at 7? Let me know where 😊**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last emoji is a happy face :)


	19. “Yes, I admit it, you were right.” (Modern AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Office AU will continue! But I might wait for a prompt that really fits the next scene I want to write (either their first proper date or a Jaime POV). Anyway, it’s likely I’ll pull that one out and make it into a proper multi-chapter once I’m done with this project.
> 
> Here’s a really random one that involves cheese again, but I guess [I can’t seem to get cheese off my mind](https://shipping-receiving.tumblr.com/post/188430659640/other-people-makes-beautiful-collages-and) (actually one of my betas suggested the idea for this ficlet, so I blame her).

“Brienne, I _swear_ it makes it taste better. There’s just, I don’t know, just this extra _crunch_ to it.” Jaime twirls his fork in the air for emphasis.

“Jaime, you are literally suggesting putting unhealthy carbs into other unhealthy carbs and putting _that _combination into our bodies.” Brienne pokes incredulously at the last invisible bits of her chicken salad. “Why do we even bother going to the gym?”

He swivels his barstool toward her. “Obviously so we can, on occasion, indulge in unhealthy carbs stuffed inside other unhealthy carbs without negatively affecting the supreme excellence of our respective anatomies.”

Brienne’s broad frame practically curls into itself in revulsion. “Never say the phrase ‘supreme excellence of our respective anatomies’ to my face ever again.”

Jaime just gives her his most lascivious smirk. “Look, I have all the ingredients right here in my kitchen. I’ll make it for you right now. You won’t even have to eat the whole thing, just enough for me to prove my point.”

“Ugh, fine,” Brienne groans, “but only because I know you will _not_ shut up about this until I’ve tried it.”

“_Thank you._” Jaime kisses her on the cheek, and gets up from his barstool to make his way around his kitchen island. He knows she must be blushing beet red behind him, though it’s been weeks now that he’s started doing this. He’s working up to actually kissing her on the lips, but it took so long for them to go from ‘we go to the same gym’, to ‘we arrange to go to the same gym at the same time’, to ‘sometimes after our workouts we hang out at each other’s apartments’, to ‘we’re just very touchy-feely gym buddies okay, mind your own damn business’. He’s biding his time, he tells himself. Maybe he’s also a little scared of what might happen when he finally does it.

Anyway, right now he’s focused on making Brienne the best grilled cheese she’s ever had in her life. As he lays out the bread, cheese, butter, and a mini packet of sour cream and onion potato chips on the counter, Brienne starts _giggling_.

“What’s so funny?”

“Are _those_ your ingredients? Gods, you are _such_ a rich boy.”

Jaime has no clue what she’s talking about. “It’s the ingredients for grilled cheese!”

Brienne rolls her eyes. “Oh yes, the fanciest grilled cheese on the planet. What is that, artisanal wholewheat sourdough?”

“Okay, you’re the one that was going on about ‘unhealthy carbs’.”

“And what cheese is that? I’ve never even _seen_ cheese like that before.”

“This,” he pronounces, as he holds it up proudly, “is a prize-winning cheese made by a tiny farm in The Reach using only locally sourced ingredients.”

“_And yet_,” Brienne stresses, “you’re using a butter that your family has to specially fly in from Essos by private order.”

Jaime should have never told her about that. “Look, it’s the best butter I have ever tasted in my life, and I will defend it to the grave.”

“And you’re about to use it on a _grilled cheese_. With what looks like your average off-the-shelf supermarket potato chips.”

“I’ll have you know that I have tested numerous brands of sour cream and onion potato chips for this recipe and this gives you the most crunch and the most flavour.”

“You’ve _tested numerous brands_? How the hells do you have a body like _that_?”

The statement is innocuous enough, between gym buddies—they both know exactly what kind of body he has, and exactly what he does to achieve it, on top of what he was just born with, of course. But Brienne bites her lip, and her cheeks turn a very interesting shade of pink.

“Like what, Brienne?” Jaime teases. He walks over to her and leans seductively against the counter. At least, he thinks it’s seductive. He’s wearing his tightest t-shirt, so that should help.

“Oh, you fucking know. All your—your muscles or whatever,” she mumbles back.

“You mean… the supreme excellence of my anatomy?” He waves his hand over the length of his body, and Brienne snorts.

“Hells, _fine_, yes, just—just make the damn grilled cheese already, will you?”

Fifteen minutes later, Jaime places the plate of grilled cheese in front of Brienne with a flourish. She picks it up, tentatively, and bites into it, equally tentatively, as if she hasn’t spent much of the past fifteen minutes trying not to drool all over the counter while watching him cook. Oh, she’s definitely trying very hard to keep her expression neutral right now.

“So… what do you think?”

“Okay, Jaime,” she takes another bite, still trying to look neutral. “Yes, I admit it, you were right.”

He punches his fist into the air. “I told you! Gods, those words feel so good coming from you. You give me far too little credit in general.”

“Hold on,” she says, as she chews and swallows. “I just mean, you were right about the chips adding an _extra crunch_.” She bites into it again, and Jaime _thinks_ she just let out a soft moan. He _has_ to make this for her again. “I can’t know if it makes it taste _better_, because I’ve never actually had a grilled cheese made with such fancy ingredients before.”

“I can’t help but notice, Brienne, that you’re already halfway through this one.” He leans over and takes bite too. “That is one fucking good grilled cheese.”

“Hey! I was eating that!” She stretches her arm out in the other direction, holding the sandwich out of his reach.

“Well, you might want to keep some of that for comparison. I’ll make another one right now, with no crunch.” He walks back over to the stove.

“This will be cold by then,” Brienne says, her mouth full of grilled cheese again. Wait, he turned his back for two seconds and now there’s barely any of it left. “You’ll need to make another one with the chips, and another one without, so I can try them both fresh. For science.”

“Sure, Brienne,” Jaime grins, already savouring his victory. “For _science._”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have nothing to say for myself, I really just wrote an entire ficlet about a mystical grilled cheese recipe that I made up (the potato chip addition is an actual thing, though). I have no clue if it will taste any good, but in my mind it tastes amazing.


	20. “You could talk about it, you know?” (Office AU Part 5)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thought it was time to introduce Jaime’s POV for the Office AU. Mentions of Cersei, but there’s no outright twincest, though their relationship is (was?) toxic. If you’ve ever read the classic [It’s Like Weather](https://archiveofourown.org/works/755430) by ssstrychnine (if you haven’t, you really should), I’d imagine it was something like that—not physical, but Cersei was still very controlling, and maybe Jaime fancied himself in love with her at some point. I know I kind of implied that he was physically attracted to Brienne first, but I imagine he leans towards demisexuality in this verse.

**Hello, dear brother. Father is dispatching me to the Stormlands this weekend to ‘talk some sense into you’. The old bastard won’t even let me go on a work day. Fancy spending the entirety of Saturday in my hotel bar for said talking of sense?**

Jaime reads Tyrion’s text and sighs. Actually, he sighed as soon as he saw Tyrion’s name pop up on his phone screen, _before_ he even read the text. 

He knows he should be happy to see his brother—and he _is_ looking forward to seeing him again—but it’s also a reminder of all the things left unresolved back in King’s Landing. 

And there’s also the small matter of how he’s supposed to meet Brienne on Saturday, too. 

If he asks Tyrion if he’s free on Sunday instead, his brother will definitely start asking too many questions. Questions that Jaime doesn’t want to answer, not over text. He won’t be able to say that he has a work thing, because Tyrion will just say that technically they _will_ be meeting for work, since they will purportedly be having a conversation about the future of Lannister Corp. And he won’t be able to say that he’s meeting a friend, because as far as his brother knows, he doesn’t have any friends here in the Stormlands. He doesn’t even have any friends back in the capital besides Addam.

(In any case, it’s not like he’d want Brienne to be characterised as just a ‘friend’, even in an evasive text to his brother. He is quite sure by now, after the past four Saturdays, that he would like her to be more than that.)

As Jaime is contemplating the likelihood of Tyrion buying the excuse that he’s signed up for a Saturday afternoon pottery class, another bubble of text pops up:

**And by ‘the entirety of Saturday’, I mean, from after lunch. I’m arriving Friday evening, but I have other activities planned in which you will likely not wish to partake, and I don’t expect to be awake till noon at the earliest.**

Of course he has other _activities_ planned. Jaime is just glad Tyrion has given up on asking him to join in on those activities.

**And by ‘said talking of sense’, I mean, not. Obviously.**

Not that Jaime expected anything else from his brother, but he finds himself feeling relieved nonetheless. **Sure, **he types, simply, **see you at 2 pm. The usual spot?**

**Nothing but the best hotel in the Stormlands for the Lannisters**, Tyrion replies.

Now, to text Brienne. Jaime considers telling her the truth—she knows the gist of what’s happening in King’s Landing, after all—but he’s been wondering for days if he said too much, back on Tarth. Not because he doesn’t want her to know, but because it’s just so… _much_. Even just the _gist_ of it. Even without having explained his relationship with his father, or Tyrion, or—hells—_Cersei_. As if any of those three relationships, the last one in particular, could be adequately described in mere words.

Brienne had said she’d be happy to listen. But she doesn’t have any clue what she’d have to listen _to_, if he really told her everything. He’d never had to explain the family to anyone outside the family before. Even Addam has had a front row seat to the Lannister family drama since they were children. Jaime had never been put in a position where he’d have to _explain_. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that he’d been avoiding those positions his entire life. Now he finds himself actually _wanting_ to explain everything to Brienne, though he’d really only spent four days with her, effectively. They hardly interact in the office, besides all the times he’s contrived to walk by her cubicle. He has a drawer full of useless photocopies to show for it.

He thinks of how easy it is to be around Brienne, despite the nerves—hers _and_ his. He has an inkling that she might like him well enough. She laughs and rolls her nice blue eyes at him, and he may have caught her staring more than a few times, especially on Tarth, when he wore The White Shirt™. But he also thinks of how she stood up abruptly in the middle of the meadow, in what he thought was the middle of their conversation. _We’re going to miss the sunset_, she had said, though they had plenty of time. 

It’s been days, and he still can’t figure out what had made her do that. It couldn’t have been the family stuff, could it? She hadn’t seemed perturbed when he told her. She’d only stood up when he told her he had been hurt that she had thought he looked average. What could possibly be so offensive about that?

Best to err on the side of caution, Jaime decides, and not tell her about Tyrion. He lies and says a client is in the Stormlands this weekend, and asks if she’s free on Sunday. It takes her longer than usual to reply, and he’s almost tempted to march over to her cubicle and just ask her in front of everyone. When her text comes through—**I’m meeting Margaery on Sunday. Sorry 😕**—he has a flare-up of that version of himself he thought he left in King’s Landing. Suddenly he feels quite inclined to fire Margaery Tyrell, though that wouldn’t change her plans on the weekend, he supposes. 

Brienne only sent a slanted mouth face emoji, which seems to suggest that he should probably send a slanted mouth face emoji in return, but he sends her a sad face instead, the most pathetic one he can find. It’s an accurate description of how he’ll be feeling on the weekend, he expects.

On Saturday, Jaime walks into the hotel bar a little after two. He can’t see Tyrion on first glance, but he heads in the direction of the same booth they sat in the last time they were both in this bar. He expects his brother will already be there with two glasses of whiskey at the ready. Tyrion is unpredictable in many aspects, but in the aspect of hotel bars and whiskey, he’s a creature of habit. True enough, as Jaime approaches the booth, he sees Tyrion sitting there, already halfway through his own whiskey.

“Tyrion,” Jaime acknowledges, as he slides into the seat.

“Ah, Jaime.” Tyrion raises his glass in greeting. “How’s life in self-imposed exile?

“Oh, don’t make it sound so dramatic,” Jaime replies, as he rotates his own glass on the table. “I’m not even that far away. I half-expected Father to send Clegane to physically drag me back to King’s Landing.”

“Not a good look for the company, I’d expect.” Tyrion takes another sip of his whiskey. “Not-far-away as you are, Father has been even more curmudgeonly than usual since you essentially told him you’d prefer to spend the foreseeable future in one of our less important regional offices. How’s _that _going, by the way?”

Jaime exhales and lifts his glass to his lips. The liquid burns as it flows down his throat. “I thought you said we weren’t going to be doing any ‘talking of sense’.”

“I’m just interested in my big brother’s life, that’s all,” Tyrion says offhandedly. “I haven’t seen you in months.”

“Again, this office isn’t really all that far from King’s Landing. You could have come for a visit, even without Father commanding you to descend upon the Stormlands.”

Tyrion wrinkles his nose. “I find this region quite… what’s the word for it. _Provincial_. Too much sea, and grass, and wind, and so forth.”

“You still managed to partake in your _activities_, didn’t you?”

“There’s always something in every city,” Tyrion smirks. “But I’m still far too attached to King’s Landing, even though it has Father and Cersei in it. And our dear brother-in-law, now, who’s completely insufferable in his own Targaryen way. I’m still perplexed about how Cersei was planning to have him go through with that whole changing-his-name-to-Lannister thing.” He inches closer to Jaime. “By the way, I have my suspicions that he’s not being _entirely_ faithful—” 

“Stop.” Jaime places his glass down on the table with a bit more force than he should have. “I don’t want to know anything that isn’t relevant to how the business should be run here.”

“You know as well as I do, Jaime, that everything that happens in our family affects the way our business is run.” Tyrion tilts his head at him. “... You’re really not planning to come back?”

Jaime leans back in his seat, and addresses the light fixture above their table. “Not if I can help it. I don’t think it’s up to me, though, in the long term. Father will find a way, I expect.”

“Indeed.” Tyrion lifts his empty glass. “Another round?” 

Jaime looks at the shallow pool of whiskey in his own glass, and nods his head. His brother signals to the bartender.

“I don’t know how you can stand it, Tyrion,” Jaime murmurs, as they wait for their drinks. Tyrion has endured far worse than Jaime from both his father and sister—for his physical appearance, yes, but maybe more so for having lived while their mother had passed.

“What can I say? I _love _drama.” And power, Jaime thinks, and strategy, and everything that comes with running a large corporation from its highest stratum. “And there are still many benefits to being a Lannister in King’s Landing. Benefits I intend to enjoy for as long as possible.” The bartender comes with two more glasses of whiskey, just then. “Anyway, who knows how things will go, with the company? I’m really quite happy to bide my time. Assuming you don’t have a change of heart, that is.”

Jaime chafes at that suggestion. “I highly doubt it. If I return to the head office, it will not be of my own volition.”

“Brother,” Tyrion says, gentler than Jaime’s ever heard. “You could talk about it, you know? With me.”

“Talk about… what?” Jaime vaguely remembers a time when they used to talk about everything, though Tyrion is some seven years younger. Then, things got so complicated. More complicated than they used to be, at least. It was all part of growing up, for a Lannister.

“I don’t know,” Tyrion shrugs. “Anything. Why you chose to stay _here_, of all places.”

“Our _family_ isn’t reason enough?”

“Yes, sure, that’s why you’re not in the capital. But why _here_? Why the Stormlands? You could go off to Oldtown. Our office there is pretty much comparable in scale to King’s Landing. Or Lannisport, even. Father would be less annoyed by both of those, I’d think.”

“Since when do you care about how annoyed Father would be?” Jaime replies, and Tyrion tips his head in agreement. “Anyway,” he continues, “Oldtown doesn’t have—”

And then he stops. He didn’t mean to. He was thinking of her, at the back of his mind, and it just came out.

Tyrion is looking at him curiously. “Oldtown doesn’t have…?”

“Look.” Jaime is suddenly acutely aware of how every slight movement causes the leather seat to squeak beneath him. “You can’t tell anyone else about this.”

“My lips will be sealed now and forever,” Tyrion promises, drawing his index finger and thumb across his mouth.

“Okay,” Jaime sighs. “I’ve… met someone. I think.”

“A ‘someone’! And this is a _dateable_ ‘someone’?”

“I _think_. I’m not entirely sure she’s open to it.”

“Still. A dateable ‘someone’ _not_ mandated by Cersei!” Tyrion lifts his glass as if in toast. “I never thought I’d see the day!”

“She would very much not be mandated by Cersei.” Jaime doesn’t want to think about how much control Cersei used to have over his life. “She’d not even be _approved_ by Cersei.”

“Interesting, very interesting. Maybe that’s why you like her so much.”

Jaime looks at him coldly. “I’d thank you not to reduce it to that.”

“Calm down, brother, I’m only joking.” They both know he wasn’t. “What’s she like, then? Miss Someone of the Stormlands? What’s her name? How did you meet?”

“Her name is Brienne. She works for us. At the Stormlands office, I mean.” 

“Ah, an _office_ romance.”

“I guess you could say that.” Jaime can feel the corners of his mouth curving upwards. “She’s tall. Taller than me, even. Eyes bluer than you’ve ever seen, and blushes far too often for her own good, but it’s… charming. She’s quiet at first, but easy to talk to, once you get her to open up. She listens to me—I mean, she listens to me _talk_, not that she _obeys_ me, and it’s—it’s not just… it doesn’t feel like it’s because of our last name. She laughs at my stupid jokes, or tries her hardest not to.”

And then, Jaime remembers one crucial point he’s failed to mention. “Oh. And the first time we spoke… she punched me in the face.”

“She what?!” Tyrion is practically splayed across the table in anticipation of this story. How many whiskeys did he have before Jaime arrived? “Why the hells did she do that and why is she already the best person ever?”

“So I _may_ have gotten drunk at an office party,” Jaime winces. “And I _may_ have told her she was ugly.”

“Is she?”

“That’s—you’re _missing the point_. I shouldn’t have said that. It was cruel.”

Tyrion looks impressed. “Bra-vo, Jaime. You know what that is?” He lifts his glass—already empty again—in another toast. “_Personal. Growth. _The Stormlands must be rubbing off on you, though I don’t remember the people here being particularly known for their niceness.”

“Alright, calm down, brother. I’m not that much of an asshole.” He can feel its untruth as soon as the sentence is out of his mouth.

Tyrion gives him a look that says, _you can be_, as he signals to the bartender for another glass. “Why did you tell her that, then?”

“Look, I was drunk, as I said. Cersei—she sent me a barrage of very angry texts that day. And I heard—” Jaime pauses, and takes a sip of his whiskey.

“You heard…?” Tyrion encourages.

“I heard that Brienne thought I looked _average_,” he mumbles. _Gods, this is embarrassing._

“_No_,” Tyrion exhales, all exaggerated dismay, and puts his hand to his chest in mock outrage. “_You_? _Average_? Say it ain’t so, Jaime.”

“Oh, shut up. She _doesn’t_ think that, anyway, I found out later. But I insulted her, and… she punched me. Gave me a black eye. She has a mean right hook, actually.”

“Gods be good, I love her already,” Tyrion exclaims, as he takes his next glass from the waiting bartender. “When’s the elopement? Please let me be at the ceremony. Do it tomorrow, I’m still here tomorrow.”

“Hells, Tyrion, we haven’t even _kissed_. We haven’t even _held hands_. We’ve been out a few times, but I’m not even sure they’re _dates_.”

“How could you _not_ be sure?” Tyrion is giving him a look that Jaime would be right to interpret as, _are you both twelve years old?_ “They’re dates, or they’re not.”

“Okay, so they _feel_ like dates, to me. But we’ve never actually… clarified.”

Tyrion plasters his palms to his face. “Gods, Jaime, I forget that you’ve never actually had to ask a woman out. You _were _the one that asked?”

“Not… exactly.” Jaime thinks of how Cersei had always just—_arranged_ things for him. Things that never got very far, or lasted very long. “I may have asked her to show me around the Stormlands. We’ve been… sightseeing.” He swishes the last two drops of his second whiskey in his glass.

“I’ll take it ‘sightseeing’ isn’t a euphemism for anything. So, just regular tourist stuff, or…?”

“Mostly.” He thinks it’s probably wise not to mention how much cheese he still has in his fridge from that farmers’ market. “But she took me to her island last weekend.”

“_Her_ island? Jaime, is she _rich_? Like, proper rich? Not that I’m recommending asking Father for his blessing for your union, but he’d be—well, I’m not sure he’s constitutionally capable of being over the moon. But whatever’s closest to that for the old bastard.”

“_No_, she isn’t rich. Her ancestors were Evenstars of Tarth, back when that title still existed. All her family has left now is a decent-sized house and the respect of the island’s small population.”

“Alright, we’re right back to the elopement then.”

Jaime needs another drink. “Tyrion, I was serious when I said we haven’t even _held hands_.” Hells, he needs two drinks. It’s his turn to signal to the bartender for another two glasses.

“Hmm. You think she likes you, though? Despite the punching?”

“I think we’re quite past that, if she actually brought me to her island.” Jaime shushes the little voice in his head that tells him otherwise. “But she’s—I don’t know what she is. Nervous. Afraid of something. Every time I feel like I want to—I don’t know, ask her out on a date, a proper one, or—or even kiss her—” _Gods_, he had wanted to kiss her in that meadow, “I just get this feeling that I shouldn’t. Part of that is, it’s me, I know, but part of it is just this feeling that she might… _crumble_. Collapse. If I even tried any of that.” Jaime leans back in his seat again, stretches out his legs under the table. “I tried to compliment her eyes, multiple times, and she would blush and thank me, but it also felt like… she wanted to dig a hole in the ground and hide there.”

“Right.” Some measure of understanding seems to be dawning in Tyrion’s eyes. “You said she was ugly, didn’t you?”

“I said I _called_ her ugly,” Jaime snaps. “And I shouldn’t have.”

The bartender brings two glasses, and Tyrion helps himself to one before Jaime can protest. His brother hasn’t even finished his last drink.

“Okay, relax. I’ll work from the assumption that she’s at least _plain_, then. And you’re… not. Maybe there’s something in that that’s making her scared. You’re very—” Tyrion waves his hand over Jaime as he searches for the right word, and settles for: “You’re_ not_ average.”

“Wow, thank you so much for that glowing compliment.”

“Hells, you don’t need praise on your looks from your own brother, do you? You’re so beautiful, dear brother, the handsomest in the land, your golden hair glitters in the sunlight and your green eyes shine brighter than emeralds—”

Jaime shudders and holds up his palm. “Okay, I get it.”

“Jaime, take it from me,” Tyrion declares, spreading his arms. “Those of us who, shall we say, tend towards the unconventional, physically. We’ve faced cruelty our entire lives, intentional or not.” The brothers share a look, then; Jaime is more than aware of what Tyrion had to experience, not least from their own family. “It’s only natural that we treat the positive attention of other people, especially _beautiful_ people, with suspicion. She’s probably just trying to protect herself, that’s all.”

“What should I do then?” Jaime groans. “Disfigure myself?” He lifts his glass to his mouth and swallows far too much whiskey in one go. How is this glass close to empty already? He doesn’t remember drinking from it at all.

“I’m—I’m going to hope you weren’t being serious, Jaime. And far be it from me to give you any advice on entering a committed relationship.” Tyrion stops for a while, as if to take a breath. He’s thought of Tysha, Jaime knows. It’s the only real relationship his brother has ever had, but their father had put a stop to that soon enough. _She’s not good enough for the Lannisters_, he had said. _Not even for Tyrion._

“My advice would be,” Tyrion continues, after a beat, “give her some space to breathe, but not too much. Show her that you care, that you think of her, that she makes you happy. Encourage her—gently—when she shows any interest. Maybe actually ask her out on a real date, brother, if she doesn’t ask you first.”

“You think she might ask me _first_?” Jaime can’t imagine Brienne ever saying those words. Or even texting them.

“Who knows what’s going on in her mind. When are you next meeting her?”

“I was supposed to meet her today,” Jaime says, sadly. “But then you told me you were coming.”

“How about tomorrow?”

“She can’t make it.” He leans forward and bangs his head on the table. How many glasses of whiskey has he had again?

“Gods, you are far too devastated by this,” Tyrion laughs. “You’ve really got it bad, brother.”

“I know,” Jaime sighs into the woodgrain.

“Well,” Tyrion pats him on the shoulder. “Whenever you next see her in person. Ask her on a date, Jaime. _Using that word._ Clarity is key.”

“Okay. I will.” 

Jaime sits back up again, and is overtaken by an urge to _laugh_.

“What now?” Tyrion must think he’s gone mad. Mad by way of Brienne. And also whiskey.

“I guess you did talk some sense into me, didn’t you? Just not the sense that Father wanted.”

“I suppose I did,” Tyrion chuckles.

They spend the rest of that whiskey-soaked afternoon together, until the afternoon stretches into the evening and into the night. It’s nice to do this, just the two of them, away from King’s Landing, away from the rest of the family. He even stays the night in Tyrion’s suite, though that might have been more a result of inebriation than any kind of brotherly bond. 

He doesn’t text Brienne for the whole of Saturday, and he tells himself he’s giving her a bit of space, like Tyrion suggested. The truth is, Jaime needs the rest of Saturday to wrap his head around that whole conversation.

But Sunday comes around, and he has a few pictures from Tarth that he hasn’t sent her yet, including his favourite of the photos he took of her from that day. She’s standing in the grass against the blue sky, and she looks comfortable, human, nothing other than herself. Yet there’s something ethereal about her at the same time—to Jaime, at least. He wasn’t sure he’d wanted to send this to her at first—wasn’t sure how she’d react—but Tyrion said to let her know that he cares, and thinks of her, didn’t he? 

So he sends it to her, along with a few other images, before he can ruin it by thinking too hard about it. Brienne doesn’t reply; probably busy with Margaery, he expects. He spends the rest of the afternoon trying to ignore his phone.

Then, around five, he finally gets a text from Brienne. It doesn’t acknowledge the photos, but this—this is better. 

**Hey, **her text says.** I know this is really last minute. But are you free for dinner tonight? **

Dinner. Just dinner. That sounds very much like a date to him, though she didn’t mention the word. So she _did_ ask him first. Assuming this is a date, of course. 

As Jaime types his reply—he’ll pick her up at seven, he decides, he’s never done that before—he smiles to himself as he adds a happy face emoji to the end of his message. He thinks he’ll ask about it later, using that word. _Is this a date, Brienne?_, he’ll say. Maybe he’ll tuck her hair behind her ear as he does it, let his finger linger on her heated cheek as she blushes. As touches go, it might be nothing compared to a kiss. Or it might be far more intimate than a kiss could ever be. He’ll do it regardless. Clarity is key, after all.

“You could talk about it, you know?” Tyrion had said yesterday, and though he hadn’t meant it for this particular situation, Jaime thought the advice was sound. They _could_ talk about it, him and Brienne—about sightseeing, and dating, and all the things that come after. They _will_. 

But first, he has to pick her up at seven. She’s just texted him her address. He’s about to look up the route when his phone buzzes again.

**See you at 7 😊**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another happy face emoji on the end?! It’s a ~parallel~


	21. “Change is annoyingly difficult.” (Retail AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe I wrote this just because I thought it was funny to pun on 'change'. It caused me far too much agony as a result.

Brienne has always prided herself on her ability to present a veneer of patience. She had cultivated this ability through all her years of working in retail—she’d been doing it on and off since she was a teenager—and once she had mastered it, it had always served her well. _Don’t react to the bullies_, her father had told her, when she was a child, _it only encourages them._ And so she dealt with any uncomfortable situations at her various jobs with the same principle. Patience. Non-reaction. A smile and a nod of understanding. A firm but kind tone of voice.

That’s not to say she’s patient at all on the inside. On the inside, she could be a wellspring of irritation, and indignation, and sometimes even rage. Working in retail does that to you too.

But on the _outside_—patience. That very specific kind of patience you need to deal with particularly difficult customers. And it’s a patience she hopes she will only need to practice for the rest of this summer, before her final year of university. Three days a week at an internship, three days working at the biggest megastore just outside King’s Landing. One day to recuperate from them both. Just for the rest of this summer.

Of course, no matter how practiced her patience is, there are always those customers that just get under her skin.

Such as the man standing on the other side of her cash register, who has been counting coins out from a small leather pouch like some kind of medieval travelling merchant, for what feels like the past two hours.

“Change is annoyingly difficult, isn’t it?” he says, as he drops coin after coin in her hand.

Brienne tries to give him a conciliatory smile in response, but she can feel the muscles in her face straining to present any degree of sincerity. Change really _isn’t_ difficult. It’s simple mathematics, and there are only so many coin denominations.

It only becomes difficult when you insist on paying for your _entire purchase_ in change.

Normally, she wouldn’t be too upset by this sort of thing. He’s not the first customer to attempt to do this, and his purchase isn’t even that big to begin with. But the thing that confuses her is—she _knows_ this man has a credit card. She knows because for the past few times she’s been put on the register, he’s somehow managed to find his way into her line, and he’s always paid with a credit card that looks far too fancy to be used in a store like this one.

In fact, _he _looks far too fancy to be in a store like this one. The first time Brienne saw him—and she remembers, because you don’t forget a man like that in a store like this—she thought to herself: this man is lost. This man, in his well-tailored coat and his shiny leather shoes and what she assumed was a very expensive watch, must have wandered in by mistake. This man is not a man who even does his own shopping, unless it’s to walk into some high-end boutique to buy—with a too-fancy credit card—other well-tailored coats and shiny leather shoes and very expensive watches that would then be organised neatly in a walk-in closet the size of the apartment she shared with her three roommates.

For once in her life, she actually wishes there were other customers waiting in line behind him. She could have maintained her veneer of patience, while gesturing at their annoyed faces and saying, “Ser, please, if you could step to the side and count your change, I promise I will ring you up as soon as you’ve got the full amount.” But as soon as any of the other customers had spotted him and his silly leather pouch, transferring coins one by one into her outstretched hand, they had immediately made a beeline for another register. Registers with longer lines, but shorter waits.

And now Brienne is trapped here, with several piles of change on her counter. Piles that are increasing at an excruciatingly slow pace.

“It’s Alayne, today, I see,” he says, interrupting her thoughts.

Brienne just stares at him blankly. First of all, she has no idea what he’s referring to. Second of all, he really shouldn’t be making conversation while he’s counting out change.

“Your name.” He lifts a finger at her nametag. “It’s Alayne, today. It was Jeyne, I think, last time I was here. Lyonel, the time before. You’ve liked the names with Ys in them, lately.”

Brienne’s free hand immediately whips up to cover her nametag, though of course the act is pointless, considering he’s already seen it, and considering she never puts her real name on it. She doesn’t like the idea of strangers calling her by her name without any proper introduction. But now she can’t decide which is worse—a stranger knowing her real name, or a stranger who seems to be keeping track of her fake ones.

_Oh gods, he’s a stalker_.

“I swear I’m not,” he replies, as if in response to her thoughts.

_Oh gods, I said that out loud._

“Yes you did.”

“You remember all my names,” she blurts out. It sounds nonsensical, like she’s some kind of spy with multiple identities.

The man just shrugs and smirks. “I think it’s hilarious.”

“How did this—why do you—” Brienne stammers.

“Well,” he begins, as if she’s even asked him a complete question. “First time I was in the store, there was some argument between a couple of customers. You were trying to defuse the situation, I believe, and you handled it well. Really impressive. I think I would have screamed at them if I had been in your position. Then I happened to glance at your nametag, and it said ‘Jaime’—that’s my name. So I thought that was funny, since my name isn’t all that common, and you handled that situation in pretty much the opposite way that I would have.”

Jaime, of the well-tailored coat and the shiny shoes and the expensive watch, doesn’t even pause to contemplate the irony of suggesting he might ever work in retail. “But the second time I was in the store, I think your nametag said Damon, or Damien, or something like that? And then the next time, it said Walda, I think. Or Walder. I think you’ve done both of those before.”

“So you’ve been coming in the store—lining up at my register—just to _check my nametag_?”

“Well, when you put it like that—”

“You _are_ a stalker.” So much for her veneer of patience. She just called a customer a stalker to his face.

Jaime looks like he can’t figure out whether to be offended or horrified. “I swear, I’ve just been trying to figure out how to speak to you, that’s all. Also, I’ve never stepped in here until a few weeks ago, and—it has _so much stuff_. I keep finding something new to buy, although I don’t really need half of what I’ve bought, come to think of it—”

“Wait. You’ve been trying to _speak_ to me?”

“Look, um, _Alayne_,” he sighs. “You—you’re very efficient with all your… scanning. Before I’ve ever had the chance to say anything, everything is already bagged up and paid for.” He lifts up the leather pouch sheepishly. “I thought I’d buy myself some time.”

“_Why?_”

“Well, for various reasons, I find it difficult to strike up a conversation with strangers I’m attracted to—oh, alright, I hear it now, it definitely sounds creepy. Gods, I’m so sorry. This hasn’t even happened to me before.”

This is it. Brienne has always known this megastore is really some portal into some alternate dimension. She must be in the alternate dimension right now.

“Hold on—could you repeat that?” she asks, slowly.

“It hasn’t happened to me before?”

“No, the part before that.”

“I find it difficult to strike up a conversation with strangers I’m attracted to?”

She points a finger into her chest. “You’re referring… to me?”

“Yes?” Jaime looks at her with a clueless expression on his face. “You seem very nice. And you have, you know, the height, and the eyes.”

According to this man, she is nice, and tall, and also, very crucially, has eyes, and therefore she is attractive. _That settles it_, Brienne thinks, _I’ve crossed over into an alternate dimension._

And then she hears the cacophony of many tiny pieces of metal hitting the floor.

_Fuck._

Wherever she was before, she’s definitely back in reality now. Or in some kind of even weirder sub-dimension constructed specially to torture her, because she’s knocked practically all the piles of change off the counter.

“Oh gods,” they both say at the same time.

Brienne looks up at Jaime, trying not to notice that he too has ‘the eyes’. “Ser—”

“Jaime.”

“_Ser_,” she stresses, “I’m so sorry, I’ll pick all of this up—”

“No—I’ll help you—”

Brienne holds a hand up, and Jaime stops. “In the meantime, ser,” she says, as calmly as she can, “would you like to use another mode of payment?”

“Yes. Gods yes.” Jaime fumbles for his wallet and fishes out his credit card. “Please.”

Once everything is paid for, Jaime comes around to her side of the register and squats down alongside her. As they pick up the change, dropping each coin into his leather pouch—oh, she can see now that it’s _monogrammed_, J.L.—he clears his throat.

“So,” he ventures, though he’s speaking into the floor. “I know I’ve probably ruined everything. But is there any chance I could at least get your real name?”

Brienne considers his request as she attempts to sweep the coins on the floor into a single heap. She supposes there’s still the off-chance that he’s actually a stalker, but he does seem nice enough. Better to be on the safe side, though.

“Hmm. Maybe next time,” she replies cautiously, even as she tries her best to hide a smile. “As long as you pay with your credit card.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The thing about having a different nametag every day is something I stole from one of the main characters of the fantastic comedy series Superstore.


	22. “We could have a chance.” (Office AU Part 6)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry this is a day late. But I hope this lives up to your expectations. I'm trying something a bit different this time and having it swap between Jaime and Brienne's POVs pretty regularly. Triangle ▼ indicates Jaime's POV, circle ❍ indicates Brienne's.
> 
> I'm going to try to catch up on the next few ficlets by Friday, but I _may_ have to leave Office AU for a while, unless inspiration strikes. I do want to make it into a proper multi-chapter so even if I don't come back to it in this Fictober series, I'll start posting it on its own next week. I think there's quite a lot I could still unfold in the story, and I may just let it grow as and when I feel like it, rather than try to have a specific end goal with the plot.

▼

_Alright, Jaime, play it cool,_ Jaime tells himself. He folds his arms and leans back against his car in what he hopes is a natural pose. _You have a plan. After dinner, when you’re both alone, ask if this is a date, tuck hair behind ear, let finger linger on cheek, etc. _He looks down at himself._ Is this pose terrible? It’s terrible. Maybe I shouldn’t fold my arms? _He shifts and rests one hand against the side mirror instead. _What do I do with the other hand now?_ He places it on his hip. _This is stupid. Oh fuck, I see her._  
  


❍

_Stay calm, Brienne_, Brienne tells herself as she pauses just inside the main entrance of her apartment building. _It’s just dinner. You never said ‘date’, did you? You can still pretend it’s just dinner._ She can see Jaime through the glass, standing at his car in what looks like a very uncomfortable position. _He needs to stop rolling his sleeves up to his elbows. Wait, no, he should never stop doing that._ By the time she steps out of the building, the heat of her blush has already spread throughout her entire body.  
  


▼

_She’s here, she’s here. _The words are an alarm in Jaime’s head as Brienne walks towards him, and he pulls his hand back from the side mirror with a jerk. She’s wearing the blue blouse he likes, the one she was wearing at the office when he first noticed her eyes, but this evening she’s worn it loose and paired with dark jeans._ She’s blushing already; that’s a good sign, right? Okay, Jaime, be smooth. _

“Hey,” Jaime says in greeting. _Fuck, that wasn’t smooth, that must have been two octaves lower than my regular voice_. He clears his throat. “Hey, Brienne.”  
  


❍

“Hey,” Brienne replies, trying to get a hold on the tremor in her voice. She absently smooths down her blouse, the one she knows he likes because it brings out her eyes. “Sorry for the late notice.” _Why the hells am I speaking like I’m writing an email? _

“No—” Jaime scrambles, “Don’t apologise for—I’m happy to—I would have—” and then he just exhales without finishing any one of those sentences.

“Well,” Brienne says, softly and courageously, “I’m glad you could make it.”

“Me too,” Jaime smiles.  
  


▼

_Don’t apologise for asking,_ was what he meant to say._ I’m happy to have dinner with you anytime. I would have dropped everything even if you had given me five minutes notice. Okay, maybe not that last one, that’s probably too much._

He opens the car door on the passenger side and gestures to the seat. “Shall we?”

“Oh! Um, I was thinking we could walk.” Brienne rocks slightly on the balls of her feet. “I know a place about ten minutes from here. Maybe not as fancy as you’re used to—” _Oh fuck, does she think I’m too fancy?_ “I mean, it’s nothing fancy, but it’s good. It’s seafood, if that’s alright with you? I called ahead and booked a table, but we can always cancel it.”  
  


❍

_Oh fuck, now he thinks I think he’s too fancy_. Brienne just wanted to pick somewhere familiar, and safe, and reliable. The food is delicious enough that he’ll remember the experience, but the ambience is also casual enough that it could just be a meal between friends, if that’s where this ends up going.

“Sure. Seafood sounds great.” He closes the door and locks the car. “We can walk. Is it okay if I park here?”

“It should be fine, I think.” Brienne points uselessly in the direction in which she’s already started walking. “It’s this way.”

“Seems like a nice neighbourhood,” Jaime comments, as he catches up.

“Oh, it’s decent. Quiet. A bit of a distance from the office, but the rent is reasonable enough that I can still get a small apartment to myself.”

“That’s nice,” he nods. “Having your own space.”  
  


▼

_I hate small talk. I am _above_ small talk._

“How was your day with Margaery?” Jaime asks.

_Is this small talk? I’m showing interest in her life; that’s good, right?_

“It was good. She’s…” Brienne bites her lip. “We had a good talk.”

_Do I want to know what they talked about? Did they talk about me? Is that why she texted me? _Jaime opens his mouth and almost asks a question to that effect, but decides against it._ I don’t want to know, anyway. Do I?_

He opens his mouth again as they stop to wait at a crossing, but before he can think of the right phrasing, Brienne turns to him. “How was your meeting with the client yesterday?”

“What meet—Oh! Um. It was good too. Illuminating.” _Gods, has a meeting with a client ever been ‘illuminating’? She’s going to see right through this._

But Brienne simply says, “That’s good.”

Jaime tries his best not to think about elopements. _Damn it, Tyrion._  
  


❍

They cross the road and walk for the next block or so in an uncomfortable silence. Brienne doesn’t know why Jaime is being so quiet. He’s usually the one to get their conversations going. _I should have just let him drive_, she thinks, though the restaurant is barely two minutes by car from her apartment building.  
  


▼

_I’m being too quiet. I’ve clean forgotten how to make conversation. Quick, Jaime, think of something to say._

And so Jaime blurts out the only thing that’s on his mind right now.

“Is this a date?”  
  


▼❍

_Oh fuck._  
  


❍

Brienne stops in the middle of the pavement. If she could have done so by screeching to a halt, she would have. “Oh! Oh gods—”

“I’m so sorry.” Jaime wipes his hand down his face. “I didn’t mean for it to come out quite so… bluntly.”

“No—um—it’s fine. It, it doesn’t have to be a date if you don’t want it to be.” _No, Brienne, that suggests you already think it’s a date_. “Uh, I mean, do you want it to be a—”

“Yes!” Jaime exclaims before she can complete her question. “… Do you?”

“… Yes. I think I do.” She should probably be making eye contact while saying this, but Brienne is finding the cracks in the concrete beneath her feet particularly fascinating right now.

“Okay,” Jaime responds, and he seems on the verge of laughing with relief. At least, that’s what she can tell while still staring at the pavement. “Good. Great.”  
  


▼

They turn and walk a few more steps, as if everything hadn’t just changed between them. Jaime didn’t tuck her hair behind her ear, or let his finger linger on her cheek while she blushed. But he got an answer, and it was the answer he wanted.

He can’t seem to stop grinning.

Then, he feels a tickle on the edge of his palm. He looks down just in time to see Brienne retract her hand back to her thigh.

“Shut up,” she mumbles.

“I didn’t say a word!” Jaime protests, bringing his eyes up to her face. She’s still refusing to make eye contact. He didn’t think he could grin even wider.

“You were going to.”

“If I was going to, I would have said, ‘Go ahead. I want you to.’”

He can see her shift her gaze from her own feet to his hand again. She grabs it, not gently, but urgently, as if she would have lost all her bravery if she had waited a second longer.

“Shut up,” Brienne mumbles again.

Jaime obeys. He intertwines his fingers with hers.  
  


❍

Jaime’s hand is warm. Brienne knows it is warm because it is connected to her own hand. She curls her fingers upwards, matches her fingertips to each of his knuckles. Her thumb strokes the flesh in the curve between his thumb and index finger. His hand feels _muscular_, how could a hand feel _muscular_? But of course a hand that is linked to Jaime’s forearm must be—

And then she realises they’ve missed a turn entirely.

“Sorry, we’ll have to turn back. I forgot to take a right back there.” She leads him back in the direction they came from. Because she can do that now. Because she is holding his hand.

“Good,” Jaime replies.

“Good?” _Why would that be good?_

He lifts their hands slightly. “More time for this.”

_Oh._  
  


▼

The restaurant is small, but cosy. An eclectic assortment of historical illustrations of the Stormlands hang on its walls, alongside other decorative items featuring various marine animals. There’s a remarkably big model of a crab hanging over an empty table in the corner, and Jaime isn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed when they’re directed to a different table.

He trusts Brienne to order her usual—she seems to be pretty friendly with the owners, who look at him approvingly. He finds this to be quite the confidence booster, and sits up a bit straighter in his chair. He can feel his knee touching hers under the table.

“Hey,” Brienne says, after she’s ordered. “How are you with spicy food?”

_I’m pathetic._ “I can manage.” _I’m an idiot._

“They have this amazing homemade hot sauce here. It’s not on the menu, but I always ask for it to go with my shrimp. We can get it on the side as a dip.”

“I’m game.” _I’m also an idiot, but I already knew that part._

Three shrimps-dipped-in-hot-sauce in, Jaime is already sweating.

“I thought you said you could manage!” Brienne laughs, as she hands him a paper napkin.

“I lied,” he confesses, dabbing at his nose.

“Why would you do that?”

“I don’t know.” _Fuck this hot sauce to all seven hells and back._ “To impress you, I guess.”

Brienne blushes as she moves the bowl of sauce towards her side of the table. “You don’t need to do that, Jaime.”

“Isn’t that what people do on first dates?” he says, from behind the napkin.

“I guess so.” Brienne gives him a rare smirk as she dips her entire shrimp into the sauce and pops it in her mouth. _She’s superhuman. But I think I already knew that part, too._

“My plan backfired, anyway.” Not that it was an actual plan as opposed to a stumble headfirst into hubris. Or rather, stupidity.

“I don’t know,” Brienne says, in the direction of the hot sauce. “You made an effort. It’s endearing in its own way.”

Jaime would be pleased by that if he wasn’t otherwise occupied with chugging his glass of iced water, and motioning to the server for a refill.  
  


❍

The owner of the restaurant offers a sort of conspiratorial smile to Brienne while Jaime takes his credit card out to pay for the meal. She’d be more comfortable going dutch, to be frank, except they’d had enough arguments over the past four weekends about who would pay for entrance fees and sandwiches and ferry tickets and so forth. Jaime almost always won, on the basis that she was doing him a favour in the first place by showing him around.

As the little machine spits out Jaime’s receipt, Brienne remembers Jaime physically blocking her from handing cash over to the bewildered woman at the art museum’s ticketing counter. And how she found that he had slipped money into her pocket at some point during their time on Tarth, though she had deliberately arrived at the ferry terminal early so she could buy their tickets for them both. She wonders if she should feel offended. She bites back a smile instead.

They walk back to her apartment building, hand in hand. They don’t speak much again, but the silence is something pleasant this time. As if a weight has lifted, and yet also _settled_ between them both. She reaches her other hand over and wraps it around his forearm. _Gods, it feels even better than it looks. How is that even possible?_

They reach his car, linger there, hands still glued together. _Ask him, Brienne. Just ask. What’s the worst that could happen?_

“Do you—do you want to come up? Margaery brought wine this afternoon but we didn’t get around to it. If you’d like some.”

“Oh! Uh—”

And then Brienne realises how that sounds. _Oh gods, I didn’t mean to imply_— “I don’t mean—” _Fuck, does he think I’m—_ “I haven’t even—” _Nope, he doesn’t need to know that— _“I just mean, it’s nearby, and the only thing around here that’s open late is this one pub and that can get really noisy—we could go sit in the park, I suppose, but it’s pretty dark right now and it’s a bit of a detour—”

“No, I, I would love to go up—I mean—to, to talk. Or whatever.”

_Or whatever._  
  


▼

_And, it’s awkward again._

Brienne is sitting next to him on her couch, both her hands in her lap, and she’s so stiff that he’s reminded of the way she sits at her desk at the office. He lets his eyes wander around her apartment while they sit in silence. Everything is simple and functional, save a framed picture on a bookshelf of someone he assumes is her father. But it feels warm nonetheless. Maybe it feels warm because Brienne is in it. Because it’s an extension of her. He thinks, for one of the few times in his life, that he is in a space that feels like a home.

Their two glasses of wine sit on her coffee table, untouched.

“Brienne—” he starts, but at the same time five words come out of her mouth in a rush:

“I’ve never kissed anyone before.”  
  


❍

Brienne had been thinking about it the whole way from his car to her couch. It seemed to her like that was where this night was headed, and she just couldn’t stop thinking of those five words. They echoed in her brain as she poured them two glasses of wine, and set them down on the coffee table.

_But I didn’t have to _say _it, did I?_

“Shit. I didn’t mean to—” She brings her hands up to her face, as if she could contain the burning of her skin with her palms.

Then, she feels Jaime’s hand wrap around her wrist, guide her hands down.

“Okay,” he whispers, though there’s no one around to overhear his words. It’s just the two of them, on her couch. This—this is the entire known universe. “Thank you for telling me.”

And then he shifts toward her. Their thighs are two parallel lines, defying all mathematical logic by meeting at every single point. One of Jaime’s hands winds around her waist, towards her lower back. The other is moving up to caress her cheek. Brienne can’t tear her eyes away from his lips, which are moving in closer and closer and—  
  


▼

“Ow! Fuck!”

Jaime’s brain is reverberating in his skull. Okay, so maybe this doesn’t hurt as bad as that one time him and Addam decided to headbutt each other for fun (it wasn’t fun, and they were more than old enough to know that it wouldn’t have been). But when you’re expecting lips to meet instead of foreheads—

“Oh gods, I’m so sorry Jaime.”

“It’s fine,” he says, as he rubs his brow with his fingers. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay. I’m sorry. Do you need ice, or something?” He feels her tender touch on his forehead, something selfless, though it must have been equally painful for her.

“No, I’m fine, really.” Jaime opens his eyes and looks through the mess of all of their fingers. Her blue eyes are glistening in the warm glow of the lamp standing next to her couch. “Oh hells, Brienne, don’t _cry_.”

“I’m not!” she insists. And then a tear runs down her cheek. “Well, I wasn’t going to until you said _that_!”

He wipes away one tear, and another. “If you don’t want to—if you’re not ready—we don’t have to.”

“I want to,” she says. It sounds to Jaime like fear and desire in the same breath. “It’s just—I’m nervous because I _really_ want to, and I’ve never done it, and I don’t want you to think—”  
  


❍

Words don’t exist.

Jaime is kissing her and words don’t exist.

What are words? There is only the feeling of his lips on hers, his hand around her neck, his hand that she already knows is warm because her own hand has held it, his other hand on her cheek. There is only her own fingers in his hair, tracing the ridges of his scalp, down to the back of his neck, daring to slip beneath his collar, and Brienne finds perhaps that she has no need for oxygen ever again.

When Jaime breaks from her, all the words come rushing back into her brain, and with that, all her thoughts, her fears. “How was that?” she can’t help but ask.

Jaime just smiles at her, and doesn’t answer. Perhaps words stopped existing for him too. After a while, he asks, “How was that for _you_?”

“I… I liked it.” It sounds trivial, when she puts it like that. But she can’t think of anything else to say. She just knows she doesn’t want to kiss anyone else but Jaime. Ever. But maybe that’s something she should keep to herself, for now.

“I liked it too,” Jaime echoes, still smiling at her. “Do you want to—we could keep—”

“Please,” she hears herself say. _Please._

As Jaime leans towards her again—leans over her, more like; she must have reclined onto her cushions at some point in that period of wordlessness—Brienne suddenly feels compelled to voice a confession. To put something into words.

“Jaime,” she whispers up to him. “I—I never thought I would have a chance at—at any of this.” A chance at dates, and kisses—and whatever comes after, eventually. A chance at _love_, she dares to think, even if she won’t say that word quite yet, and won’t for a while longer.

“I could say the same to you,” he breathes.

“Really?” _How could that be possible?_

“Really,” Jaime says, with a quiet conviction, a singular truth. He tucks her hair behind her ear, and lets his fingers linger on her cheek. “But we could have a chance, don’t you think?”

This time, Brienne doesn’t reply. She doesn’t put it into words.

Words—words don’t exist. Not for the rest of this night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, they really only just kiss for the rest of the night lol. I know it sounds ambiguous but I don't intend for them to move that quickly. I think they need to get some of their baggage out in the open first before they get to that stage.


	23. “You can’t give more than yourself.” (College AU Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I started this as a sequel to the [College AU from Day 5](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20848634/chapters/49694579) (reading that back now after loads of ficlet practice—boy do I want to rewrite those first couple of paragraphs). Anyway, this got all contemplative and soft and significantly less funny than the first one, because of the nature of the prompt. Hope you like it anyway!

There’s no other word for it. 

Brienne’s dorm room is _tiny_. 

She only chose it because it was the cheapest option that still allowed her to have her own personal space. Plus it had an attached bathroom—also tiny, but it was just _hers_.

The thing is, Brienne’s dorm room was tiny even when she was the only one in it. Now there’s a Jaime in it too, almost always.

Oh, she was perfectly fine with it those handful of times he had been in her dorm room in the last gasp of the last semester, when they were working on that Medieval Studies assignment. With the two of them sprawled on the floor, books and notes and laptops and all, they basically covered the entire available floor space. She was perfectly fine with it then, because it was _temporary_. 

And then she had gone and _kissed him_. 

Then they hadn’t seen each other for the whole break—she went back to Tarth, he split his time between King’s Landing and Casterly Rock—and now they were five weeks deep into the new semester, and he just _wouldn’t leave_. He has a gigantic apartment just outside of campus, and he chooses to be _here_. 

Fine, so he shares that gigantic apartment with his twin sister Cersei, who’s apparently not taking the news of his relationship with Brienne very well, for whatever reason. Brienne knows he just doesn’t want to be around his sister right now, and she’s honestly, truly flattered that he’d want to spend time with her, but—does it have to happen in her dorm room? Her _tiny_ dorm room?

She suspects that the only reason he’s not sleeping here, besides the rules about overnight guests, is that her bed is similarly tiny. They still haven’t progressed much further than—okay, they had gone quite a bit further than kissing. But they haven’t really done anything that _technically_ required the use of a bed. They did, however, attempt to cuddle a few times, and those few times had ended with Jaime on the floor. Jaime spending the whole night in bed with her, even just sleeping beside her fully clothed, would be physically impossible.

At least she’s gotten him to stop talking so much when she’s working. _When I’m at my desk, don’t talk to me unless it’s urgent,_ she finally told him two weeks ago._ Just sit on my bed, or wherever, do whatever you want, as long as you don’t talk to me while I’m working._ She felt, bizarrely, like she was trying to train a dog. _Sit. Stay._

He’s lying on the bed now, quietly flipping through one of the books she brought with her from Tarth that she thought might be useful this semester. She’s eyeballs deep in an essay due tomorrow, and trying very hard to ignore the sound of those flipping pages.

And then Brienne hears: “Wench.”

She didn’t say he was the most _obedient_ dog. 

Brienne ignores Jaime, too focused on trying to get the phrasing right for this one sentence that’s been bothering her for the past twenty minutes.

“Brienne,” he calls again.

She turns around and sighs. “Is this urgent, Jaime?”

He flips the book around and points to a note in the margins. “What’s this?” He turns it back and reads it out: “It says, ‘You can’t give more—’”

“Oh!” Brienne exclaims, trying her hardest not to blush. She remembers exactly when and why she wrote those words. “I forgot I wrote that in there.”

“What does it mean? ‘You can’t give more than yourself’? Doesn’t seem to relate to anything on this page.”

Brienne rests her arm across the back of her chair, and picks at the woodgrain. “It’s something my dad used to tell me. I always—remember how I told you how I’ve always pushed myself really hard? In school, or sports, or whatever?”

She doesn’t lift her gaze from the woodgrain, but she sees Jaime nod at the periphery of her vision.

“I always wanted to prove I was more than just—my body. More than what all the bullies thought of me. Sometimes my dad thought I was pushing myself too much. ‘You can’t give more than yourself’, he would say. But I thought it was nonsense. I even told him so, sometimes. I was always trying to be _more_.” She laughs; lightly, sardonically. “Which I suppose is kinda funny, because I always wished my body could be _less._”

Brienne knows Jaime will be tempted to respond to that, say something about how he likes her body the way that it is, but she doesn’t want to hear it. She looks up then, just to silence him—he did have his mouth half-open, on the verge of words, but he meets her eyes and closes it. What they have between them is new, fragile—they haven’t figured out yet how to talk about her body in a way that’s comfortable for her. Just as they haven’t figured out yet how to talk about Cersei, or the rest of his family, in a way that’s comfortable for him.

After a beat, Jaime lies back on the bed, the book face down on his chest. “You know,” he says to the ceiling, “my father always wanted me to give _more_. To _be_ more. My sister, too, in some ways. Something… closer to what they wanted me to be. They didn’t put it quite like that, that I had to give more than myself. But it was implied, I guess.”

“Oh,” Brienne replies, simply. She doesn’t think Jaime is quite ready to talk about all that. He said those words as if he’d just realised all of that in this very moment. She takes a breath instead, prepares herself to tell him the truth of that note in the margin. 

“I wrote that phrase there over break.”

“Ah,” Jaime says as he lifts the book up from his chest to scrutinise the words again. “I thought this seemed pretty recent.” 

“Yeah. I was… I was trying to read the book. But I was getting distracted.” She bites her lip. “I was thinking of you. Of us.”

He turns his head to look at her, a pleased expression on his face, but waits for her to continue.

“My dad thought I was working too hard again, studying over break. I was actually texting you half the time I was trying to study, but he didn’t know that.” Brienne smiles as she thinks of how she sandwiched her phone between the pages of her books, and the excitement she felt every time it lit up with Jaime’s name, even though he was texting her so frequently she barely had time to anticipate each new message. “So he said that to me again. ‘You can’t give more than yourself.’ And then, for what felt like the first time, I thought—oh. I don’t want to.”

“How so?”

“I guess—I don’t know. I felt like, with you, I just had to be me. Like I was enough for you, and you didn’t need me to be _more_. I mean, all we had done at the time was kiss, and we hadn’t even talked about what we were supposed to be, to each other.” 

Pretty much the moment they had got back from break, they had forced themselves through the world’s most awkward conversation—in Brienne’s tiny dorm room, of course—in order to clarify things between them. But those weeks apart, they were really nothing more than classmates who happened to have kissed, and who couldn’t stop texting each other.

“It was kinda early for me to feel that way, I suppose,” Brienne continues, conscious still of Jaime’s eyes on her, of the generosity of his silence. “But the whole time I was on Tarth, I would wake up every morning and think, ‘This is the day he stops texting me.’ But you always did. And it was—it was nice. To feel like I was enough for someone, even for just a moment. Even just over text. Even though I… I don’t always feel enough for _myself_.”

Brienne sits up, retracts her arm from the back of the chair. She feels stripped bare by her own confessions. “Anyway.” She wraps her arms around herself, tucks her chin into her chest. “That’s why I doodled that in the book. I guess I was thinking about how this sentence I had known for so long could feel so different. Almost like it had a different meaning.”

Jaime is quiet for a long while. He won’t tear his eyes from her, but he’s not saying _anything_. Her dorm room feels tinier than ever; the silence is congealing around them, a third living entity taking up the space between her desk and her bed. 

But just as Brienne starts to feel some regret at sharing those thoughts—_was it too soon? too much? more than I should have said?_—Jaime asks: 

“Wanna take a break?”

Brienne looks up. “Huh?”

“You’ve been at that essay for hours,” he says, shifting towards the wall. “Take a break. Come here.” He pats the space he’s made for her on the bed.

“We can’t _fit_, Jaime,” Brienne laughs. He didn’t respond to anything she said, not with words, but she finds she doesn’t mind. “We’ve _tried_.”

“You’re on the outside this time,” he smirks. “It’s your responsibility to not fall off.”

She does fall off, later. She brings Jaime down to the floor with her, of course—he deserves the same fate, for distracting her from her essay. They kiss there on the carpet—where there’s just enough space for them both—and suddenly Brienne knows exactly how she should phrase that stupid sentence she’s been struggling with.

But she’ll deal with that later. Now—now is for kissing Jaime. She thinks, between breaths, that she’d like to make her own amendment to her father’s words. It’s not that you can’t—it’s that you _don’t have to_ give more than yourself. Not to the ones who matter_. _That’s what she should have doodled in the margins instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's way more to explore about this phrase, I think, but I'm tired lol. I'm still one day behind on prompts, but I'm going to try to write two tomorrow (including Office AU Part 7 _maybe_), so I'll catch up soon enough.


	24. “Patience… is not something I’m known for.” (Professors AU Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who hand-waved the whole Targaryen incident from [last time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20848634/chapters/49816823). Blah blah plagiarism something, there we go. This is the second story in a row about Brienne working at her desk and Jaime on a bed behind her, but this one might be rated a light M.

Jaime doesn’t understand how Brienne can work in the same room that she sleeps in. 

He gets that her place isn’t the biggest. But surely if she’d just get rid of that massive couch she could put her desk out in the living room, and not here in her bedroom. Not that they haven’t enjoyed that massive couch in many ways, but _still_. He doesn’t understand how she can sit at her desk and work, knowing her bed is right behind her, tempting her with its comforts.

He doesn’t understand how she can sit at her desk and work, knowing that _he_ is on the bed right behind her, waiting for her. But he supposes she can’t possibly see that he’s already naked, because Brienne is currently hunched over her desk, taking far too long to mark her students’ papers. 

Gods, she’s just so… _conscientious._ He flipped through some of those papers just now, and they deserve far less of Brienne’s time than she’s devoting to them. She should devote some of that time to _him. _But she gets so focused when she’s marking, she probably didn’t even hear him remove any of his clothes, though he tried his best to get some noise out of them. Why did he leave his softest cotton t-shirts at her place?

“Brienne,” he calls. He thinks he might have gotten quite close to _purring_ her name, in fact.

But she just grunts in response.

“Prof,” he tries instead.

“Don’t call me that,” she mumbles, robotically.

“Brienne,” he switches back, pitching his voice even lower. “Come to bed.”

“Need to finish marking, Jaime. You can go to sleep first if you want.”

She’s being difficult. Why is she being so difficult? “I don’t want to _sleep_, Brienne.”

“Then you’ll have to be _patient_,” she replies, still not looking up from her desk. He does notice, however, that she changed the cross of her legs.

“I’m afraid, Professor Tarth—” Jaime didn’t miss the way her eyes widened when he called her that in bed last week— “that patience… is not something I’m known for.”

Brienne shifts a little in her chair, but still doesn’t even grant him the courtesy of turning around. “I’m well aware of that, Professor Lannister.” _Oh gods, it works on me too. I need to make her say that later._ “But I’m _busy_. Just let me finish marking this one paper.”

Jaime wants to scream. _So much for my sexy voice_. He decides a more direct approach is required, so he gets up from the bed and walks over to her, peeks over her shoulder at the paper she’s marking. “Oh gods, that one? That one was awful. Just give them a D and be done with it. Then _come to bed_.”

“Don’t be a dick.” She still isn’t looking at him. How much willpower does this woman have?

“How is _that_ being a dick?” He looks down at his own—neglected, waiting. “It’s just the truth. This kid probably spent less time writing this than you’re spending marking it.” He takes a step forward so that he’s standing beside her, and casually starts adjusting random objects on her desk.

Brienne casts a sideways glance at him, and then almost falls off her chair. “Seven hells, Jaime!”

“Well, I’m glad you finally noticed!”

Her eyes are squeezed shut, which seems like a frankly useless endeavour when they’ve been sleeping together for three months now. “Gods, why are you _naked_?” She’s blushing furiously, as expected. 

No, wait—she’s _flushed_. Flushed Brienne means something quite different. Flushed Brienne means something _good._

“I did tell you I didn’t want to _sleep_, Professor Tarth.” He lets the words roll off his tongue, all honey and wine.

Brienne opens her eyes reluctantly. “Alright, _fine_.” _Oh, like it’s such a torture for her_. She pushes her chair back, stands up ramrod straight. “But you have to do that thing you did last night, for being so impatient.”

“I did a lot of things last night,” Jaime says, as he takes her hand and leads her to her bed. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“You know what I’m—” he kisses her— “I don’t want to—” he kisses her again— “will you just—” and again— “just do all of them.”

He can manage that, and then some. Especially if she calls him Professor Lannister.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might be the first story I've written in 3 weeks that's actually less than 1000 words? But I'll be working on Office AU Part 7 for the rest of the day :)


	25. “I could really eat something.” (Office AU Part 7)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much for "I might take a break from Office AU". This is the softest one yet, if you can believe it. Oh, and I posted a very short Professors AU sequel a few hours ago, so now I'm caught up!

Jaime blinks his eyes open; slips gently out of a dream. It was a nice dream. He was kissing Brienne in this dream, he thinks.

He doesn’t notice it at first—there’s nothing unfamiliar about a ceiling painted white, especially in the semi-darkness—but as he stretches his limbs, he realises he’s on a couch that isn’t his own, next to a coffee table that isn’t his own, next to a lamp that isn’t his own. He’s under a blanket that isn’t his own. He’s in a t-shirt and sweatpants that aren’t his own, but seem to fit just right, anyway. The clothes that are his own have been folded and stacked in a neat pile on the coffee table. His watch and phone sit on top.

It wasn’t all a dream then.

He reaches over to check the time. Just before six in the morning. He looks at the sky through a window that isn’t his own, sees that it’s cobalt already. He’ll need to leave soon, or he’ll be caught in traffic, and he doesn’t want to start his Monday morning caught in traffic. He doesn’t want traffic to ruin the afterglow of his Sunday night, a Sunday night filled with kisses tender and ardent. He runs the tip of his tongue over his lips.

Jaime rolls off the couch, folds the blanket neatly, leaves it there. He walks over to Brienne’s bedroom, knocks on the door. No answer, but—he’d rather not leave without telling her. He twists the doorknob as quietly as he can.

She’s still asleep, something peaceful, all her nerves in hibernation. Her limbs are outstretched, spread across almost the entirety of her bed, though it’s a bed meant for two. Jaime makes a mental note of this habit of hers, tucks it away for when it’ll eventually be relevant to him, because it will be. It may take weeks, maybe months, but it will. His bed is bigger, anyway.

“Brienne,” he whispers, leaning down and shaking one of her shoulders. She almost starts awake, not used to having someone else there to rouse her from her sleep. Her eyes meet his, and soften. He sees it in her too—the realisation that it wasn’t all a dream. Her cheeks turn a shade darker in the muted light of daybreak.

“Hey,” she whispers back, shifting herself up to lean back against the headboard. “What time is it?”

Jaime takes the liberty of sitting on the edge of her bed. “Six or so. I have to leave soon. Got to head back to my place before work. Just wanted to let you know.”

“Okay. I hope the couch was fine.” She reaches the tips of her fingers under his palm; he lifts it slightly, lets them find their way into the depression at its centre. They can do this now—eleven hours ago, it would have still been a faint hope. “Sorry I—” she stammers, “the bed—”

“Don’t, don’t _worry._ I told you last night, it’s fine. I slept well.” It was past midnight by the time they came up for air; they would have gone on, if the next day wasn’t a work day. He had thought about driving home—it wouldn’t have taken long at that time of night—but Brienne had tentatively offered her couch, a blanket, a change of clothes, accompanied by an apology that she couldn’t let him share her bed, not yet. Jaime had thought about how her apartment felt like a home, and agreed.

He leans in to give her a kiss goodbye—another thing that would have been a faint hope, nine hours ago—but she shields her lips with her hand. “I’ve just woken up,” she mumbles from behind her fingers. Jaime doesn’t think he’ll mind, really—it’s not like he’s brushed his teeth either—but maybe this is just a little too much intimacy, for right now. So he nods, and stands up from her bed. He’s about to say _bye then, see you in three hours_, when she flings her blanket off her legs.

Her _legs_. She’d changed last night in her bedroom, after they’d said goodnight, into what must be the shortest shorts in the world, a fact that she doesn’t seem to be at all conscious of. Miles and miles of Brienne’s bare skin—or perhaps bare is the wrong word, because the freckles that dust lightly over her cheeks form constellations across her legs too. It’s more than he’s ever seen of her, just right there. It’s his entire field of vision. He can’t speak.

Brienne just gets up from her bed—she might have said something like “Hold on,” but it turns out he can’t hear, too, when all he can see is her skin—and walks towards her bathroom. She leaves the door open, and he just stands in the doorway as she fills her cup with water, squeezes a blob of toothpaste onto her toothbrush, and starts brushing. While she’s doing so, she squats down—_legs_—and opens the cupboard beneath her sink, rummages in it for something.

When she stands again, she has a new toothbrush in her hand, and holds it out to him. “If you want to,” she says, matter-of-factly. She doesn’t seem to realise there’s any significance in this act. They’ve just had their first date, and now she’s offering him a _toothbrush_ in her apartment. But it seems as if she just thinks of it as—addressing a practicality. So he doesn’t say a thing besides thanking her, and takes the toothbrush from her hand. When she’s done, she makes way for him at the sink. It’s all just on the edge of domestic, and Jaime finds his thoughts are getting very far ahead of—of whatever the status of their relationship is.

He turns to her once his own teeth are clean, the mint of Brienne’s toothpaste something subtly strange in his mouth, and sees her leaning against the door, waiting. He kisses her then, a kiss good morning, a kiss goodbye-for-now, just for the next three hours. Her arms wind around his neck. He has to go on his tiptoes, slightly—this is their first kiss standing up, he realises—and this sensation is something subtly strange too. But not unwelcome.

Jaime pulls back from her, reluctantly, and her hands move to his shoulders. He looks down at himself. “Do you… need these clothes back now?” he asks. “I can change back into my own.”

“You can wear them back home if you like,” she shrugs. “Or you can leave them in the laundry basket.”

“I’ll—I think I’ll wear them, if that’s alright. Wouldn’t mind driving back in comfort, actually, this time of the morning. I’ll give them back to you once they’re washed.”

She smiles a little at that, and he thinks she knows from how he said those words that he’s the kind of man who has the privilege of having other people do his laundry. It’s not that he _doesn’t _know how to use a washing machine, but—

And then Jaime has a thought.

“Hey—do you—my apartment is right by the office. It’s—if you want a lift—I’d want to leave soon, but—”

Well, maybe he should have given this thought a bit more time to percolate before verbalising it.

“Oh—I don’t—well.” Brienne reddens, but doesn’t say _no_. She must be thinking of her bus, and train, and shuttle, even as she must be thinking of what it means to be stepping into his apartment for the first time, so soon after he’d first stepped into hers, and slept there. They’d just had their first date, for crying out loud.

“Sorry,” he says on instinct, though he doesn’t really think he has anything to apologise for, besides perhaps destabilising her in some way. “I didn’t mean to presume—”

“Oh, don’t—it was nice of you to offer. Could you wait fifteen minutes for me to shower, at least? I can bring my clothes—and I don’t take much time to get ready—but I’d—I think it’s better if I showered here.”

“Of course. Sure.” As Brienne nods and heads to her bedroom to grab a change of clothes, Jaime tries his hardest to remember exactly what state he’d left his apartment in yesterday evening. It should be fine, he thinks. It’s a service apartment, and housekeeping was just in on Friday.

Fifteen minutes later, they step out the door, Brienne’s work clothes hanging over her arm, Jaime’s clothes from last night hanging over his. Her work bag is slung over her shoulder. Jaime saw her throw some of her makeup in there; he knows she doesn’t wear much, but it was barely anything, three tubes. She’s in the same dark jeans, and a t-shirt, and her straw blonde hair is still damp and sticking to her face in strands, the skin there pink from the steam of the shower. She locks the door, drops the keys in her bag.

Then he holds her hand as they make their way down the stairs and to his car. Because he can do that now. It’s no longer just a faint hope.

* * *

Brienne is sitting uncomfortably on Jaime’s couch. It’s a very comfortable couch, to be quite honest, but she’s sitting uncomfortably anyway, because it’s hitting her full in the face that Jaime Lannister is _rich._

She’s been to Margaery’s apartment, which she shares with Loras, and they’ve all been to Renly’s. The two Tyrells are pretty well off, as is Renly—significantly more so than she is, though all four of their positions at Lannister Corp are pretty much comparable. They have family money she doesn’t have, and their homes reflect that accordingly.

But _this_. It’s not an actual Lannister home, but it’s still a luxury service apartment paid for with Lannister money. Not just a service apartment—a _penthouse_. It looks like it was conjured out of a magazine spread, all branded minimalist furniture in black or neutral colours, and floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Everything is spotless, though Jaime must have lived here for months, and he doesn’t strike her as an obsessive cleaner. He had some clothes slung over an armchair when they first got here, which he had quickly snatched and flung into his bedroom. There’s a dirty dish or two in the sink, but that’s about it.

She’s suddenly embarrassed that Jaime had to sleep on her couch.

He’s been in the bathroom for an age, which doesn’t surprise her in the least. She’s already in her work clothes, and it took her less than five minutes to apply the little makeup she wears to work. She might have to leave her t-shirt and jeans here, she realises, because her work bag is stuffed with documents this morning, and she’d rather not have to answer any questions regarding why she might have clothes spilling out of it.

Westeros News is running on his gigantic flatscreen TV, but she hasn’t absorbed any of it since she switched it on. Her brain is too preoccupied with the events of the past thirteen hours. The dinner that turned out to be a date after all. The handholding. Inviting him up to her apartment. That embarrassing collision of their foreheads—she’s glad neither of them developed any unfortunate bruises this morning, and she hopes she can laugh about that soon enough. Then, the kissing.

Gods, the _kissing_.

And now she’s in _his_ apartment. Waiting for him. So they can go to work. Together.

Should they?

Hells. She didn’t think about that. What would it look like? It’s just a couple of blocks away, so they can walk from his apartment building, but what would it _look like_, the two of them walking into Lannister Corp together? People have only just stopped talking about the punch as it is, and the fact that she kept her job after. And surely—surely other people have noticed how he walks by her cubicle, and how she walks by his office. Have they noticed? Margaery noticed, the first _week._ And now they’re walking from his apartment building to the office, in full view of everyone. What would it look like?

A hand on her shoulder interrupts her thoughts. She turns to see Jaime, in his suit, hair slicked back. There’s none of the softness she saw in him earlier this morning. He fits into this apartment, looking like this.

“Brienne—are you okay?” he asks, a look of concern on his face. “I said I’m ready.”

“Yeah—sorry. I’m just. I’m thinking. You have a—it’s a nice place.”

“You already told me that,” he replies, amused. “I like yours better, anyway. I was thinking about it in the shower.”

Brienne is pretty sure Jaime has one of those fancy rain showers that she’s only heard of and never seen in person, let alone experienced. It seems like a strange place to realise that he likes her tiny apartment better. “Why would you think _that_?”

“Feels like a home,” he says. “Nothing here belongs to me. It’s very nice, but it isn’t mine.”

She wants to ask him if he’ll find somewhere more permanent, somewhere he can make his own. But that seems like asking him if he’ll be staying in the Stormlands, and he said himself, on Tarth, that he’s not sure if he’ll have to go back to King’s Landing at some point. It’s not a conversation she thinks they should be having just before work. Or just after their first date.

Jaime walks over to his fridge and opens it. “Gods, I could really eat something. Haven’t done any grocery shopping in a while, though. All I have is milk.” He takes out a container that looks like it has barely a cup’s worth of milk in it, shakes it helplessly, as if it would make the liquid magically multiply. When it doesn’t, he puts it back and closes the fridge. “Are you hungry? Wanna have breakfast somewhere? There’s that cafe between here and the office.”

She knows exactly which cafe he means. _Everybody_ knows that cafe. She can’t be seen in that cafe with Jaime on a Monday morning. Besides the whole—punching thing, she doesn’t report to him for _any_ of her projects. It wouldn’t look like they were having a work meeting over breakfast, surely. _What would it look like?_

“Jaime—it’s—” She digs her fingers into her thighs. “Do you think it’s a good idea for us to—to be seen together?”

He tilts his head at her, confused. “What do you mean?”

“I mean—what would people _think_? If they saw us together?”

“Gods, is there some company policy against this?” He asks this with vehemence, as if he’d be ready to tear that policy apart if one existed. Brienne thinks he probably could do that in the span of a day.

“I don’t think so,” Brienne answers. If there is one, Renly and Loras are definitely blatantly disregarding it. Margaery too, though her office dalliances are usually short-lived.

“You… you don’t want to be seen with me?” There’s a note of something wounded in his voice.

“No! I mean, it’s not that.” _Why would he think _that_? If anything, _I_ should be the one to ask _him_ that question._ “I punched you,” she exhales.

He smiles, as if remembering it fondly. “Yes, I’m aware that was something that happened.”

“Then I didn’t lose my job, because you intervened. If we’re seen together—people might think—I don’t know.” She doesn’t quite know how to put it into words, the _scandal_ of it. Or maybe it’s more that there are so many possible interpretations she doesn’t want to consider. So she settles for: “They might connect the dots in a way that they shouldn’t.”

“Oh,” is all Jaime says.

Brienne stands up from the couch, and walks over to where he’s still standing by the fridge. “I would love to have breakfast with you. But I think—there are things we need to figure out, first.”

He nods, a little stiffly. “I’ll work something out.” Brienne has an inkling Jaime might just want to let people _know_, office gossip be damned. Perhaps later, she thinks, if he can’t _work something out_. After a few more dates. Not today.

Brienne puts her hand over his on the kitchen counter. “I guess—I can go first. Into the office I mean.” She hopes no one from work walks by Jaime’s apartment building as she leaves. Not that they’d necessarily know that he lives there, but _she_ definitely doesn’t.

“Alright. I’ll see you in the office then.”

She’s about to turn, pick up her bag and leave—oh, her t-shirt and jeans, she hasn’t asked him about leaving them here yet—but she thinks of how he said, _you don’t want to be seen with me?_ And it suddenly dawns on Brienne that he needs some kind of reassurance, with her. She always thought she’d be the insecure one, if she ever entered a relationship with anyone, but maybe Jaime—

So she moves in closer, lets her lips touch his. They kissed for hours yesterday night, and they kissed in the bathroom this morning, but still it feels like something new and different. There’s so much more to discover, between them—between two bodies—and for the first time in her life, she might feel anticipation about that prospect, rather than fear.

“Bye Jaime,” she breathes, when they break apart. “See you in the office.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH LOOK, the office part actually matters in this one?! They didn't make it there, but it actually had some ~influence~ on the 'plot'.


	26. “You keep me warm.” (Post-Canon)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A continuation of [the post-canon ficlet from Day 2](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20848634/chapters/49588586). I changed the rating of this whole series back to T a few ficlets ago, since most of them are very tame, but this story is rated M. It’s not particularly detailed, but it’s their wedding night, what can I say?

They didn’t find an inn.

By the time they had left the sept, it was already getting dark. They had left behind a septon still deeply perplexed by the two wandering knights who had barged in on his tiny sept in the middle of the forest, one of them a woman in armour, no less, and taller than the man. The man had loudly demanded a wedding ceremony to be performed immediately, while the woman looked decidedly unenthused by the prospect. Brienne supposed this might have worried the septon slightly, because he had looked at her with a kind of concerned expression, though surely with a sword hanging at her hip he could expect her to defend herself from any unwanted unions. Even a union with Jaime ‘I know where I’m going’ Lannister.

(The septon had probably been even more deeply perplexed by the intensity with which the decidedly unenthused woman still managed to kiss the loudly demanding man at the end of the ceremony. But Brienne had been holding in so much irritation at Jaime for dragging her around a forest in search of a sept that, again, _they wouldn’t have needed if he hadn’t annulled their first marriage_. She just needed somewhere to put all of that irritation, even if that somewhere was Jaime’s lips.)

In any case, the septon had told them that the nearest inn was an hour’s walk away, and the last time someone told Brienne something was an hour’s walk away, it really wasn’t. So they didn’t find an inn, didn’t even bother to venture in that direction. Instead, they are now lying on their bedrolls, warming themselves by the fire that they’ve built in an open space between a sheltered grove and a small creek. Brienne supposes it could be picturesque, and she might think so when she wakes in the morning. There might be dewdrops perched delicately on the leaves around them and whatnot, and perhaps the early morning sun might be so inclined to dance on the surface of the water to the tune of melodious birdsong.

But _gods_. Gods, did she want to sleep in a proper bed tonight.

“You do realise, Jaime,” she says, as she undoes the laces at her collar, and lets him kiss his way down her neck, “that this is our wedding night. We’re sleeping on the cold, hard ground on our wedding night. Not even in an _inn_, Jaime.”

“You keep me warm, wife, on this cold, hard ground. As I do you, I trust,” he replies, as he pushes up the hem of her tunic. He doesn’t bother stripping her of her tunic fully—he would have, if they were in an inn, which they are most definitely not, and it is too cold tonight. But his mouth is adamant in its exploration between one rib and the next, and across the slight dip framed by her ribcage, as if travelling those paths for the very first time. “Who needs inns when we have each other?” he mumbles, just before his mouth becomes otherwise preoccupied with her breasts.

_I do_, Brienne wants to say._ I need inns. I want a bed._ But Jaime’s flesh hand is making its way down to her seam, to the bud that lies beneath the folds at its crest, and soon enough he is bringing her so close to her peak that the sounds leaving her throat cannot metamorphose into words, and her yearning for an inn is overtaken by a desire for something quite other than that.

Until he draws his hand back just seconds too early.

Brienne groans in frustration. Hells, she was so close, and now she can already feel herself receding from her pleasure. “Is it your intent to torture me today, husband?” she scolds. Thoughts of inns and beds, the ones from before and the ones yet to be graced by their presence, flood back into her mind.

Jaime just smirks. “Hmm,” he murmurs, as he moves further down her body, pulls down her breeches and smallclothes in tandem, just far enough. She has the absurd thought that he actually _does_ know where he’s going right now, after a day of being lost in the woods. “I like it when you call me husband. Will you do so only when I frustrate you, wife?”

_That would be always, then_—is a thought she wants to speak but fails to yet again, because his mouth is on her now, and when just moments ago she had thought that his fingers would be all she ever wanted, now it is his lips, his tongue, his teeth, and she finds for the umpteenth time that she can forgive every word he’s ever said that’s caused her any amount agony, if this is the pleasure that she can receive from that very same part of his body.

When she guides him into her entrance, tastes herself upon his lips, she thinks perhaps she can forget that they are on the cold, hard ground—they’ve done this so many times before, in any case—and perhaps she can forget that he spent most of the day dragging her around the Riverlands, looking for a sept that he claimed to be an hour’s walk away. He is her husband, now, in the eyes of the Seven, though she had felt like his wife for for far longer than just these past few hours. Now, now she can call him ‘husband’, use that word in its entirety, scold him with it with no kernel of untruth. Each time she says that word, she can forget that he annulled their marriage once before—the pain that act had brought her, though she didn’t fully understand it at the time, didn’t know how much she wanted to be his wife. When she calls him ‘husband’, she will remember only that he saved her time and again, as she has done for him; that he knighted her, and rediscovered his own knighthood in her; that they find new pleasures and vexations in each other every day; that they’ve loved each other since before the end of the world; that they will continue to do so in all the years that come after—as they wander through forests, or sail across seas if they feel so inclined, do so with Valyrian steel swords strapped to each of their hips, two swords forged from the same blade.


	27. “Can you wait for me?” (Office AU Part 8)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gosh I think I've been writing this baby for 9 hours straight, save breaks for meals and so forth.

All of a sudden, Brienne thinks she might have a boyfriend.

They haven’t talked about it—the word. The _status_. But she thinks she might have one.

It’s been just over a week since her very first date. Her very first _kiss_. Her very first time having a man over to her apartment for the purpose of kissing. Her very first time being at _his_ apartment, which wasn’t _supposed_ to be for the purpose of kissing, but became a location at which they had kissed, nonetheless. People don’t have boyfriends within a week of doing all those things, do they?

But it feels like she might have one.

She’s not seeing anyone else, obviously. And she knows _he’s_ not, at least not in the past week, because—well, they’ve been together almost all the time. Unless he went on dates after work last Monday and Tuesday. Or in the middle of the night. Or after they had breakfast on Saturday, or before he was at her apartment on Sunday afternoon. Or maybe on Sunday night. Or those couple of times he went out for business meetings. But one of those times he took his assistant. He could be dating his assistant? But Peck is dating Pia in accounting, isn’t he?

Anyway, she supposes all those scenarios are plausible. But it sounds quite tiring for him, in her opinion, if Jaime is really doing any or all of that. And he probably wouldn’t have sent her sad face emojis on Monday evening, when she left for the gym in a hurry, right after work. She just—she needed some time to herself, to internalise everything. When she checked her phone after, she found that he had also texted her, **I have a gym in my building, if you ever need to use it**. That isn’t something you’d text someone if you were dating people in addition to that someone, right?

Then, on Tuesday morning, she had actually given Jaime advance notice about going over to Margaery’s that evening. Which is something they do now, apparently—tell each other about their schedules. It’s not that she was avoiding him per se, though she did feel guilty when he sent her a sad face emoji again, the one with the single tear. But Brienne just needed someone to be there in front of her—so she could _externalise_ everything, this time—and Margaery told her Loras wasn’t going to be home that evening. So Brienne went over, told Margaery all that had happened since, Gods, since _two days before_, and sat through an indecent amount of shrieking in the process. She had to make Margaery promise not to do any of that shrieking without Brienne present, not even to her brother, and not to Renly.

She especially couldn’t do any of that shrieking in the _office_.

On Wednesday, and Thursday, and Friday, however, Jaime was all—**See you after work? **or **Going to the gym tonight, wanna join?** or **Come by later. I’ll cook dinner. **She had said yes to all of those things, even the last one, though she had been very suspicious of Jaime’s culinary skills considering he only had a single almost-empty container of milk on Monday morning. But he managed, something simple that still tasted wonderful, more wonderful because he had cooked it specially for her.

And then there was wine.

And then more kissing.

And then she slept on _his_ couch this time, in the clothes she lent him when he slept on hers. He hadn’t asked her to share his bed—she had this feeling that he _wanted_ to ask, even though he didn’t— but he had offered to sleep on the couch so she could have the bed all to herself. She said _no, I couldn’t possibly_, and he said _please, you’re my guest_, and they went back and forth about it for far too long, until she decided to just lie down on the couch and not move. He laughed in defeat, and had the concierge send up an extra blanket.

In the morning, he drove her back home. They had breakfast together for the very first time.

At the office, though, for this first week after their first date—Brienne didn’t know what to _do_. How to _act_. Jaime still came by her desk, but now there was something different to his smile, the way he said her name. It was this, this undercurrent of—_I know. I know what it feels like to have your lips on mine. _And she knew the same, could barely look in his eyes because she _knew_. It was because she knew that she felt she could no longer dance with him. She stopped walking by his office.

By Wednesday, he’d noticed. When he walked by her cubicle, smiled at her, said her name, it now had an undercurrent of—_Where have you been? Dance with me, Brienne. What’s wrong with a little dance?_ But he didn’t bring it up on Wednesday evening, or Thursday evening, or Friday evening.

When she woke up on his couch, realised it was a Saturday morning, she felt awash with an immense _relief_. It was ridiculous, this relief of _Saturday_, as if she had survived some perilous ordeal. But it was just five days of—of working in the same office as the man who might be her boyfriend. The man who is also, technically, her _boss._ On the scale of ordeals, this was hardly perilous at all. But she felt the tension leave her body all the same, at the realisation of the significance of a Saturday. There wouldn’t be a need to step into the office on a Saturday. There wouldn’t be a dance. Jaime was there by her side, anyway—on Saturday morning, on Sunday afternoon.

The second Monday after their first date, Brienne decided Mondays would always be _her_ night to go to the gym on her own. She told Jaime so in no uncertain terms. She wanted to see him, she did—out of his suit and his slicked back hair—yet something in her told her it would be good to have that one night to herself, every single week. She would go to the gym where she actually had a membership, not to the gym in his apartment building. Although she had to admit that his gym was really, really, _really_ nice.

But today—today is Tuesday. She’s sitting at her cubicle on a Tuesday morning, has no plans with Margaery tonight, has no plans with _anyone_. And now she has the option of having plans with Jaime, who _might_ be her boyfriend.

Right on cue, he texts her: **Do you have plans tonight?**

**No**, she types, then thinks. She follows with, **Movie?** They haven’t gone for a movie yet. That’s something people do on dates, isn’t it?

**Sounds good**, he replies. She notices he’s typing his next message for a while. When she receives it, it says: **Which cinema?**

Which cinema? There’s one just down the street, and another about fifteen minutes walk away. She’s seen colleagues at both of those. They could go to the one that’s nearest to her apartment, but he’d have to drive all the way there in traffic. And where would he pick her up? Would she wait for him outside his apartment building? There’s also the one that’s about halfway in between here and the office. It’s not too far from the train station. Would she take the train, and have him drive there? That seems safe, but also—she doesn’t think Jaime would be pleased about that. They could take the train _together_, she supposes, or maybe—she’d leave first, and he’d follow—Gods, does he even know how public transport works? She actually doesn’t know the answer to that question. Would he get lost?

And just like that, one question became a hundred. She’s still holding onto her phone, looking at different cinemas on the map, trying to work out all possible permutations of watching a movie with Jaime in public, when he walks by her cubicle.

“Brienne,” he greets, and pauses at her cubicle. He doesn’t—he’s not supposed to _pause_. His eyes dart to her phone.

“Jaime,” she replies, keeping her voice steady as she can. Margaery’s chair is rotating towards them—Brienne can see it out of the corner of her eye—and she glares at Jaime. _Keep walking_, she tries to communicate with her eyes. He looks at her for a few more seconds, then walks away.

She immediately opens her messaging app and types, **I’ll let you know later.** **I’m looking up the timings.** Deciding on the venue _is_ part of looking up the timings, isn’t it?

Jaime starts typing, stops, starts typing again. But when his message arrives, all it says is, **Okay.**

Then, Brienne gets an important email. And another, and another. She has to reply to all of those important emails. It’s just a cinema—it’s just movie timings—but isn’t there so much to do? She has so much to do. She has to eat lunch at her desk, she has too much to do. Next thing she knows it’s four-thirty in the afternoon, and her phone vibrates with another text from Jaime.

**It’s looking like I’ll have to work late. Don’t think I can do a movie, but would still like to have dinner. Can you wait for me?**

Well, I guess that solves the cinema problem, Brienne thinks, though she knows it doesn’t. The cinema problem will continue to exist. They can’t just—avoid movies. But what would it look like—the employee going for movies with her boss, whom the employee had punched? The employee who didn’t lose her job after, because of that boss? _Which cinema? _is just another way of asking _What would it look like?_ And they hadn’t figured out the answer to that question at all.

But she doesn’t say any of that. **Of course**, Brienne replies. **Have some work to finish up, too. I’ll be at my desk. **

At five, Renly comes by her cubicle to invite her for post-work drinks. She declines.

At six, Margaery asks, “Are you sure you don’t want to join us?” Brienne says, “No, too much work to do,” but she looks pointedly in the direction of Jaime’s office anyway. Margaery just nods and flashes her a grin. Brienne returns that grin with a weak smile.

At seven, there are just a few people left in the office. Brienne stands up, on the pretext of stretching after a day sitting at her desk, walks to where she can see the entrance to Jaime’s office. The lights are still switched on. Not that she expected otherwise.

At eight, her phone lights up with: **Twenty minutes, I promise. **There’s one, maybe two people left that she can see, and they’re packing up to leave for the day.

**Why don’t I go get takeout?** she texts back. **Meet you at your place at 8.30?**

**Sure, **he says.** Anything’s good, as long as it isn’t spicy.**

Brienne thinks of shrimp dipped in hot sauce and smiles.

At eight-thirty, Brienne sits herself down on a bench in the lobby of Jaime’s apartment building, two bags of takeout beside her. She nods at the man sitting at the concierge, who’s seen her with Jaime three times already in the past week, as did the doorman who very kindly let her in. At eight-forty, Jaime bursts through the main doors.

“I’m so sorry.” He leans down to kiss her on the cheek, to Brienne’s surprise. He hasn’t kissed her in public before, even if just on the cheek, even if this is just the lobby of Jaime’s apartment building. “You must be starving.”

“Oh—it’s fine,” she says, still a little stunned. “Sorry you had to work late.”

“Yeah. Had to go through some contracts. Sometimes that takes me awhile.”

Brienne wants to ask Jaime what that means, why going through contracts might take awhile for him specifically. But he’s already picked up the takeout bags and held out his hand, so she takes it and follows him into the elevator.

They put on a movie while they eat, something they’ve both been planning to watch but haven’t gotten around to, and Brienne can’t help but think this is much safer than a cinema. The movie isn’t as good as they had hoped, not even bad enough for them to rant about—it’s just so much more _ordinary_ than they had expected. But they agree to sit through the whole thing anyway.

When they’re done with their food, Jaime puts his arm around her, and she curls into his side. It’s something she never imagined she could do—curling into a man’s side—and it’s not exactly the most comfortable position in the world for someone built like her, but she does it anyway. They’re both still in their work clothes, of course, but Jaime’s taken off his jacket and tie, unbuttoned a couple of buttons. Most importantly, he’s rolled his sleeves up past his elbows. Brienne wraps her hand around his arm absently.

“You like doing that,” Jaime murmurs, his eyes still on the TV.

“Hmm?”

“Touching me there.”

Brienne pulls her hand back. “Should I not?”

“I don’t mind,” he says. “Just an observation.”

She finds she can’t touch him there now, though he’s said he doesn’t mind. She folds her hands in her lap, stares straight at the TV. “I just—they’re nice.”

“My forearms?” he asks, bemused.

“Yeah. Is that creepy?”

Jaime laughs. “No, I’m flattered. I like them too.”

Brienne rolls her eyes. “Of course you do,” she mutters, feels Jaime’s low chuckle travel from his body into hers. She leaves her hands in her lap.

It’s only when the movie ends that Brienne thinks to look at the time. “Oh fuck, it’s late,” she exclaims, jumping up from his couch. “I hope I can still catch the train.”

“I’ll drive you home,” Jaime offers.

“It’s too far. It’ll be past twelve—maybe almost one by the time you get back.”

“I could—” and then he falls silent. “It’s fine,” he says instead. “I’ll drive you.”

_What was that? _“Hold on—what were you going to say?”

“I was going to say—” Jaime looks somewhat sheepish. “I was going to say I could stay over. Then I could drive you to work tomorrow, too. Or drop you off somewhere, if you—if you don’t want us to be seen together.”

“Oh.” _Oh._ “But you’d have to sleep on the—”

“I don’t mind. Only if you don’t mind.”

“I, I don’t mind. Would we need to leave at six, though?” It was fine that one time, and she usually has to be up by six forty-five anyway, but she’d definitely appreciate that extra bit of sleep.

“I could—I could bring my clothes. Get ready at yours. If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind.”

_Okay then._ Since neither of them seemed to mind any part of this arrangement, Brienne finds herself in Jaime’s car, driving back to her place past eleven at night. As she looks out the window, the height of the buildings getting shorter and shorter as they travel towards the outskirts of the city, she thinks, once again, that Jaime really might be her boyfriend. She supposes today counts as their sixth date. Or seventh, if she includes the breakfast on Saturday morning, though it was really sort of an extension from Friday night. All of that in—what, _ten days._

“Did you figure out which cinema, in the end?” Jaime asks abruptly, when he stops at a red light.

“What?”

“Which cinema would we have gone to? If I didn’t have to work late?”

“Oh—I—I got caught up with work—”

“Oh.”

Brienne sighs, looks down at her hands. “The truth is, I didn’t know which one to pick, Jaime. I was freaking out about who would see us, if we went to the ones within walking distance of the office, and then it seemed like too far to go to the one near my apartment, although I guess we’re heading there now anyway so I suppose I could have picked that—”

“Brienne—”

“Sorry. I’m rambling. It’s stupid.”

“No—it’s fine.” The light turns green, and Jaime accelerates just a little too quickly. “I just wanted to say—I’d like to watch a movie with you. At a cinema, in public. I’d like to do that with you at some point, without having to worry. I’ll drive to the one in your neighbourhood, if that’s what you’d prefer. But still, I think—this is—it’s something we need to sort out. Being seen.”

“I know,” Brienne mumbles.

“I know I said I’d work something out but—is there anything to figure out, really? Are we doing anything _wrong_?”

“No—I suppose not. But people will _talk_, anyway.” Brienne picks at her fingernails, thinks of how she came to punch Jaime in the first place, thinks of _Brienne the Beauty._

“I—it’s not that I don’t understand it, but—does it matter?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think we’ll know if it matters until they start talking.” She’s always tried to brush off people’s words, but—has it ever really worked? Truly worked? Haven’t those words always found ways to burrow underneath her skin, stay there?

“We can’t hide forever,” is Jaime’s response.

Brienne looks over at him. Jaime’s eyes are still firmly on the road. _Forever_. Isn’t it too soon for words like that? Yet, Jaime’s about to stay over at her apartment again, for the second time in ten days. He has a change of clothes in his back seat. He’ll be sleeping on the couch, but—he has a toothbrush waiting for him at her sink. How did this all happen? In _ten days_?

The rest of the drive is quiet. So is the walk from the car to her apartment, though Brienne holds his hand, anyway. He’s sitting on her couch, hands clasped together, when she brings her extra blanket out to him.

“Two months,” she announces, as she sets the blanket down beside him. _Two months_—it feels like a long time compared to _ten days_, but—

Jaime looks up at her. “Two months?”

“We… we keep it quiet for two months. Then—we’ll review the situation.” She doesn’t want to be so businesslike about it, but it’s best to have some kind of timeline. She thinks it’ll help Jaime feel settled, somehow, even if she _is _making him wait.

“Okay,” Jaime exhales. “Two months. If my father doesn’t—”

_Oh_. She forgot about that. She sits down next to him, slips her fingers between his. “We’ll assume he won’t. If he does, and we want to—to continue. Then we… work something out.”

“Okay. Two months.” He turns to look at her, grips her hand tighter. “Will you do something for me, Brienne? Will you—at least not treat me like a stranger? At work?”

“Oh—oh gods, I’m so sorry about that.” Brienne buries her face in Jaime’s arm. “I guess I just—I don’t know how to act around you now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I just think I’ll—I’ll smile too much or something.”

Brienne feels Jaime’s fingers brush her hair away from her face. “I wouldn’t mind that.” _Gods, will he ever not make me blush?_

“How about this.” She perches her chin on his shoulder. “I’ll promise to _try_ not to treat you like a stranger. Is that good enough?”

“Hmm,” Jaime says, attempting to sound aloof and failing miserably. “We’ll see how you do this week. Then we can _review the situation_.”

Brienne gives him a playful nudge just before she stands back up. Her hand is still in his. “Goodnight, Jaime.”

“Goodnight, Brienne,” he replies. She takes a step away, two steps, but he won’t let go of her hand. As she rounds the couch, Brienne remembers the first morning she spent in Jaime’s apartment, waiting for him to get ready. She leans over, rests both their hands on his shoulder. “Please, for Gods’ sakes,” she whispers in his ear, “wake up early if you’re gonna spend an hour in the bathroom.”

“I will,” he smirks.

Brienne thinks for a moment, or stops herself from thinking, then gives him a kiss on the cheek, just as he had kissed hers in the lobby of his apartment building. She attempts to walk in the direction of her bedroom—except Jaime’s fingers are still entwined with hers.

“_Goodnight_, Jaime,” she repeats, looking meaningfully at their hands.

Jaime says nothing. He only brings her hand to his lips, kisses it like a knight of old, and lets her go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There'll be at least one more instalment of Office AU in October, I think, but I'll start posting it as its own thing starting 1 November. I've already edited all the existing chapters (some more extensively than others) for this standalone version!


	28. “Enough! I heard enough.” (High School AU)

Brienne doesn’t think it’s very difficult to understand the concept of keeping your voice down in a library. It’s really just the considerate thing to do. People need some peace and quiet to read and write and study. She’s understood this concept since she was four years old. She’s sixteen now, and she expects the other students at this high school to understand this concept too.

And yet she is standing in an aisle, barely able to remember the title of the book she was looking for, because of a very distracting conversation happening in the next aisle over. They’re trying to whisper, but it’s the pointless kind of whispering that’s so harsh they’d probably be better off just talking at a normal volume.

“How many girls have asked you already?”

Of course it’s a conversation about prom. Prom is this Saturday. Everyone is talking about _prom._

“Nine. Or possibly twelve? Some of them were so nervous about it I couldn’t tell if they were actually asking me.”

Oh. It’s Jaime Lannister. Jaime is the most popular boy in school. Jaime might also, somehow, be her_ friend_. _Her_. Brienne Tarth. She still has no clue how that even happened. He started off insulting her appearance, which was all old news to her even at fourteen-going-on-fifteen. By the second week of it she’d gotten this feeling he was almost _performing_ those insults for his friends or something. It sounds like he’s talking to Addam, though—Addam’s cool.

“_Twelve. _You know how lucky you are, Jaime?”

Brienne is still trying to focus on looking for her book, trying _not_ to listen in on Jaime’s conversation, which is really quite difficult when her mind was already on Jaime anyway. She finds that she thinks about Jaime a lot of the time. They had a couple classes together last year—she skipped a year, he had to redo those subjects—and suddenly she found herself helping him with schoolwork. And then they became friends, she thinks? But the real reason she’s been thinking about him a lot of the time is that recently he’s been saying weird things like, “You know, Tarth, you’re very good at sports.” Or, “You have really nice handwriting.” Okay? She knows this? She doesn’t need Jaime Lannister to tell her things she already knows. Especially not if he still insists on calling her by her last name.

“I don’t _feel_ very lucky, Addam.”

Hells. Of course he doesn’t. _Twelve girls_ have asked him to prom and he isn’t pleased? Maybe he isn’t _satisfied. _Maybe he’ll only be satisfied with _thirty_. 

Brienne is very happy to notice that she’s found the book she’s looking for, at the exact same point in time that she’s desperately wanting to be very far away from this conversation. Unfortunately, in order to get very far away _and_ borrow this book in the process, she also has to walk by that very same aisle where Jaime and Addam are pointlessly whispering about prom. She strides past the aisle in one step—thank the Gods for the length of her legs—but she hears Jaime say, “Was that Tarth?”

She walks even faster.

Once she’s made her escape, she heads straight for her regular spot, a forgotten table and bench at some secluded but surprisingly well-lit corner of the school. It’s her next best option after the library for some quiet reading time, with no one to bother her. 

Except she forgot that she used to bring Jaime here back when she was helping him with his assignments. 

He’s walking over to her right now.

When he arrives at her side, he greets her with: “Tarth.”

She returns his greeting with: “Jaime.”

He sits himself down beside her, back leaning against the table. “Did I see you in the library earlier?

“No,” she lies.

“Are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure I saw a very tall girl with hair the exact colour of yours walk by.” He tilts his head to look at the cover of her book. “Also, you’re reading a library book.”

She slams it shut and shoves it in her bag. “Okay. I might have been in the library.”

“Why didn’t you say hi then?”

“Do I have to say hi every single time I see you?” she replies, a little too harshly.

“That’s social convention, yes.”

“Well, I’ve never been conventional, have I?”

“I suppose you haven’t. But you were just in the next aisle, weren’t you? And we hadn’t seen each other all day today.” He nudges her lightly as he says this, and Brienne instinctively brings her arms closer into herself.

“You were busy,” she replies, firmly. “I didn’t want to intrude.”

“It was just Addam.”

“You were busy with Addam, then.”

“It wasn’t that important.”

“Really? I thought you’d care a bit more about _prom_.” 

_Oh hells._

“Ha!” He turns sharply towards her. “So you _were _eavesdropping.”

“I wasn’t—I wasn’t _eavesdropping_,” Brienne hisses. “I was looking for a book in the aisle next to yours and you weren’t keeping your voices down, like you’re supposed to do in a _library_.”

“So, how much did you hear?”

“I just said I wasn’t eavesdropping.”

“How much did you hear, Tarth?” _Why is he leaning in so close?_

“Nothing.”

“Are you sure?” _Jaime is very close._ “Are you absolutely sure about that, Brienne?”

_Why is he even more annoying when he calls me by my first name?_

“Enough!” Brienne shoots back, and grabs her bag so she can sandwich it between them. “I heard enough.”

“And what exactly is ‘enough’?” Jaime drawls.

“You’re—you’re in very high demand for prom,” she replies. She’s determined not to engage beyond that point. 

He’s taking her bag now and putting it behind him where she can’t reach it. “That’s it?”

“That isn’t enough? Personally, I think it is. I don’t find it all that interesting.”

Brienne winces inwardly at the tone of her voice. She has never been very good at affecting nonchalance.

“I think you missed the most _interesting_ part of the conversation,” Jaime says.

“Oh really? So you do know who you’re taking to prom then?” Why is she asking him this? She doesn’t want to know this. And yet— “Pray tell, I’m _so very interested._”

“I know who I’d _like_ to take to prom.” Jaime props one of his elbows on the table, rests his head on it and looks at her. “But I haven’t asked her yet.”

Brienne swings her legs over the bench and stands up. “Gods, haven’t enough of them put their names in the running?”

Jaime stands up too, tries to block her from getting her bag. “I’ve said no to all of them.”

“Oh gods, please tell me you’re not bringing your sister.” She really wouldn’t put it past the Lannister twins to do something like that, if Cersei gets that idea in her head.

“I’m not—hells, Brienne. Will you stop for a second?”

His hand is on her arm. Why is his hand on her arm? “Why does this whole conversation even concern me?”

“Because I’m trying to ask _you_, you idiot.”

_Is this a joke?_ Brienne shrugs her arm out of his hand. “_You’re_ the idiot.” She’s really more eloquent than this, usually. “And no you’re not.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure I am,” Jaime insists.

“You can’t be.”

“‘Will you go to prom with me, Brienne?’ There, I just did.” He folds his arms and smirks at her. _This is a joke._

“If this is a joke, Jaime, I’m punching you in the face right now.”

Jaime’s smirk turns into alarm. “It’s not a joke, and I’d like to not go to prom with a bruise on my face, thank you. I’d like to go with _you_.”

Brienne stops, takes a breath, closes her eyes. Very slowly, she says: “You’re absolutely, one-hundred-percent, swear-on-the-Lannister-family-name serious?”

“Yes. Brienne.” _Again with the first name._ “I’m serious.”

“Okay then.” She opens her eyes, looks straight into his. “Fine.” If this is a joke, she can still punch him in the face later, and then some.

“Fine?”

“Fine.”

“Great. I’ll be at your house at 6.”

“Fine.”

“Wear blue. I’ll wear blue.”

“Fine.” She’d have clocked him on the head for daring to dictate their colour scheme, if he hadn’t already told her before that blue goes well with her eyes. One of the weird things he’s been saying recently. Or maybe not so weird, in light of even more recent events.

“Okay then.” Jaime rubs the back of his head, shifts his weight from foot to foot. “Gotta go to class.”

“Fine.” She brushes past him to get her bag.

“See you later, Brienne.” 

_Brienne._

Before she knows it, Jaime’s gone. She looks down the hallway, sees him just turn the corner.

Fine. So she’s going to prom with Jaime Lannister.

Fine. This is fine.

Everything is going to be _fine_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, another suggestion of Brienne punching Jaime in the face! At least she didn't _actually_ do it in this one? (Not that he didn't deserve it in Office AU)


	29. “I’m doing this for you.” (High School AU Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, prom as requested, but with a twist. I'm tired as hell so this might not make much sense. By the way, there are no corsages/boutonnieres in this verse because I was getting confused about what flower to pick and who buys what and what the right etiquette is in general. I didn’t go to a school that had this tradition (or any tradition for that matter) for prom.

At 5.57 pm, Jaime pulls up in front of the modest single-storey house that Brienne shares with her dad. He checks his reflection in the rear view mirror—eyes still as green as when he last checked, and not a single strand of golden hair out of place. He takes a deep breath, and gets out of the car.

Just to be safe, he checks his reflection again, or as much of his reflection that he can see in his car window. He’s wearing his navy blue suit with a deep maroon tie—he’s still a Lannister, after all, he has to have some shade of red somewhere—and he thinks he looks quite dashing, thank you very much. But he has no idea what shade of blue Brienne chose in the end, or if she’s even actually going to wear blue like he asked. She’s evaded or flat out ignored every text he’s sent this past week to ask her what she’s wearing. He has three different blue suits, for Seven’s sake; he needs to pick the one that matches best. In the end, he decided the navy was the most neutral option, and he’s now marching his navy-clad self up to Brienne’s front door.

His finger has barely even touched the doorbell when Brienne’s dad flings the door open. Jaime straightens his back immediately.

“Good evening Mr—”

“Yes, hello Jaime.” He shepherds Jaime into the house and into the living room with an outstretched arm. “Let me get one photo of the two of you before I leave.”

“Um—”

“BRIENNE!” he shouts. “JAIME’S HERE!”

Jaime thinks he might have heard a muffled groan, then— “COMING!”

He hears her footsteps coming down the hallway, but just as he’s expecting her to round the corner into the living room, he hears: “Promise you won’t laugh.”

“Why would I laugh?” Jaime asks, at the same time that her dad says, “You look lovely, Brienne,” in that tired way of a man who has said those words to his disbelieving daughter too many times today.

“I don’t—” he hears, and then there’s another groan, and then he sees a corner of navy blue cloth peek out around where he thinks her knee should be. Navy blue is good; navy blue matches his suit. But that corner of navy blue isn’t moving.

“Gods, Tarth, just—”

“Fine!” she exclaims, as she steps out from behind the wall.

_Oh._

She’s wearing a sky blue shirt—he thinks it might be a men’s shirt, but it fits her well—with the sleeves rolled up neatly to her elbows. She’s left two buttons unbuttoned so he can see her collarbone—and considering she wears crew neck t-shirts pretty much all the time, he almost feels embarrassed to be able to see her skin there. It’s tucked into a navy blue A-line skirt that hits just below her knee, and it flares out enough that it’s a nice balance to the breadth of her shoulders. Pinned to her shirt is an elegant brooch, a golden starburst set with tiny sapphires, and she’s put a couple of golden bobby pins in her hair, too, just to pin it back from her face. He knows she refuses to wear makeup, and he didn’t expect her to, but her lips look just a touch pinker than usual. And then he looks at her feet and wants to laugh in delight because she’s wearing navy sneakers with white laces, and it _works_ somehow, it works for Brienne, and she probably doesn’t even know it. It’s—the whole look is—well, it’s hardly conventional at all, but Jaime thinks—

“Brienne, you look—”

But before he can even pay her any compliments, she just starts _rambling_.

“Shut _up_, Jaime. I’m doing this for _you_. _You_ asked me to prom. _You_ told me to wear blue. Well, I don’t own a dress, and I couldn’t find one off the rack within my budget, let alone a blue one, and I know this isn’t what girls usually wear to prom but I had to improvise, I don’t even have the right shoes and I’m pretty sure I wore this skirt to a funeral once, and the brooch was my mom’s and it’s the nicest thing I own—”

At that point he grabs both her wrists, and she goes quiet immediately. “Brienne,” Jaime says, in earnest, “I was going to say you look _nice_.”

“... Oh. Um. Thank you,” she says, stiffly, but there’s a bit of colour to her cheeks now that wasn’t there before. “You—you look nice too.”

Jaime flips his hair dramatically, and flashes her his most winning smile. She rolls her eyes at him, but he swears the colour in her cheeks is three shades darker than it was three seconds ago.

Suddenly, he feels a hand on his back swivel him around.

“Alright, one photo before we all have to get out of here.” Brienne’s dad is definitely pressing the button on his phone for far longer than it takes to take one photo. “Smile for the camera!”

“Where’s he going?” he asks Brienne from between his teeth. He puts his hand around her waist.

“Date,” Brienne mutters under her breath. She squirms beneath his hand.

When her dad is finally done taking probably a hundred entirely identical photos, he gives her a huge hug and says, “Have fun! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” Jaime bites back a smile when he sees Brienne’s eyes widen, as if she’s thinking, _but you do a lot of things, Dad._ Then, they’re ushered out the door, in the direction of Jaime’s car.

Jaime thinks about holding her hand, just the short way from the front door to his car. But then he thinks of her squirming beneath his hand on her waist, and doesn’t. He uses that hand to open the door for her on the passenger side.

For the first half of the drive to school, neither of them say a single word. Jaime notices that Brienne seems to be taking very deep breaths.

“Are you nervous, or something?” Jaime asks, finally.

“What do _you_ think?” she snaps.

_Hells._

“It’s just prom,” Jaime says. He feels stupid already, saying something like that when he’s dressed in his navy blue suit for the occasion.

“What do you mean, _it’s just prom_?” she scoffs. “How can it be _just prom_ when you know you’re definitely going to be crowned Prom King?”

“Not _definitely._”

“_Definitely._”

“Since when do you care about that kinda stuff, Brienne?”

“I don’t _care_, I’m just—but I’m your—don’t _you_ care?”

“Not _really_.” Okay, he might care a little bit, but _not really_ accommodates a little bit of caring, right? “I just want to have a nice night with _you_.”

Brienne doesn’t respond.

They’re at a red light right around the corner from the school now, and he can already see everyone making their way inside. He looks over at Brienne, at how her eyes are fixed on them, in their dresses and their suits. Then, she stares down at her skirt, where her hands are bunched up tightly in the fabric.

They don’t speak again until he’s parked the car.

When he gets out, Brienne is still sitting in her seat, not moving. It’s not that he doesn’t want to open her door for her, it’s just that the few times she’s been in his car, she’s never waited for him to do that. But it’s prom night, right? He wants to do this for her. Yet, when he opens the door, she’s still frozen in her seat.

“Brienne.”

No answer.

“Tarth!”

She startles, looks up at him. “Sorry. I’m. I’m ready.” But then she turns her head back to the dashboard, and she’s still not moving.

“Are you okay?” Jaime puts his hand on her shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she says, as if she wants to crawl into the glove compartment and hide there. “I’m—it’s nothing. Let’s go. I can do this. I—I want to do this for you. I don’t want you to miss prom.”

“Why do you keep saying that? You’re doing this ‘for me’? If you didn’t want to come with me—”

“No—” She looks up at him again, eyes wild with alarm. “it’s not that I don’t want to go with _you_. I just—it’s a lot of _people_. A lot of _dancing_ people. A lot of girls in dresses a lot nicer than what I’m wearing. A lot of people who don’t—think very much of me.” She worries at her lip for a few seconds, then says, “These people also think very much of _you_.”

“I don’t care what they think.” It’s not entirely true, but it’s truer than it was before he became friends with Brienne. “Since when do _you_ care what they think?”

“I don’t! It’s just—too many people who’d be _looking_, and _whispering_, and I’m not even in a dress—”

“I think you look great!” Should he be more descriptive? He can absolutely be more descriptive if that’s what she needs.

“I know _you_ do!” She takes another deep breath. “But—look, it’s fine, give me a second and I’ll, I’ll get through it.”

“Don’t—” _Don’t torture yourself for me_, Jaime wants to say. But Brienne has already swung her legs out of the car, and is striding with purpose towards the school.

Then, as they get nearer to the entrance, he sees it. The way people turn to look at her, and at him right next to her. He sees exactly what she was so nervous about.

Brienne’s strides are a little less purposeful now.

“Brienne.” He tugs on her arm. “Why don’t we just—go somewhere? Away from all of this?”

She turns back to him. “I don’t want you to miss prom!” she repeats, helplessly.

“We don’t have to go far. Somewhere in school. I’m sure there has to be a classroom that isn’t locked. Or your corner, where we used to study.” _Where I asked you to prom._

Brienne stares at him for a long while. “The library,” she says, finally. Then she turns, and walks away.

* * *

_This is so stupid_, Brienne thinks, as she keys in the door code to the library. That part isn’t the stupid part—she got the code from the librarian barely two months into her first year, because she’s smart and she uses the library diligently for its intended purposes. The part that _is_ stupid, is how she just basically panicked just before she was about to go to prom with Jaime. How many girls in this school would die to be in her position?

She switches on the lights in the far corner, where there’s a couple of comfy couches. Jaime is following close behind her as she walks towards them. She sits on one of the couches, and expects him to take the other, but he settles himself right beside her instead. It’s snug, and their arms touch. It’s not even her skin against his; he’s wearing his suit after all. She tucks her arm into herself anyway.

“How do you know the code?” he asks, moving closer to her.

“The librarian likes me.” She can’t move further away, unless she devises a way to melt into the arm of the couch. “Sometimes I stay past opening hours to study.”

“Nerd,” Jaime says, and there’s no cruelty in it at all.

“Guilty as charged,” she replies, with a small smile.

She leans back on the couch, stretches out her legs, and Jaime mirrors her. She looks over at him, all dapper in his navy blue suit—it had taken all her willpower not to collapse in the living room when she saw him—and then she looks down at her own outfit, cobbled together from so many random parts. She’s wearing _sneakers_. And she’s supposed to be at prom with Jaime Lannister.

Brienne needs to know, and now’s no better time than any other. “Why did you ask _me_ to prom, Jaime?”

He turns his head to her. “Why not?” he asks in return, as if she’d just asked him the most ludicrous question.

“I’m—I’m _Tarth_,” she insists. Like that would explain everything.

Jaime just laughs. “That’s why I asked _you_. Because you’re _Tarth_. Because you’re Brienne, and I like you, and I don’t want to go to prom with anyone else.”

_Wait_.

“Um.” She’s gripping the fabric of her skirt again, though she’s already creased it in the car. “Can we rewind just a little bit?

“To which part?”

“To that part where you said… you _like_ me?”

“What about it?”

“Could we just—make that crystal clear?”

“Um. I… like you? I’m not really sure how to be anymore straightforward about it.”

“Like… as a friend?”

“No…?”

“Oh.” _Oh gods._

“Yeah. I know I haven’t really _said_ it, but. I was kinda planning on doing that later tonight. During prom. Or after, maybe. Your dad didn’t actually give me a time to have you back home.”

“Oh—uh—he usually doesn’t have to worry about that.” _She’s_ usually the one wondering when her dad will get back from his dates, actually.

And then Brienne looks down to where her hand is gripping her skirt. Except she’s _not_ gripping her skirt. She’s gripping Jaime’s hand.

When did _that _happen?

“I’m going to assume,” Jaime says, tentatively, “since you haven’t let go of my hand yet, that this is fine with you.”

Brienne just nods. Is it very warm in here? It feels very warm. It feels like her shirt is sticking to her back.

“And just to be crystal clear—” he nudges their linked hands— “do you like _me_? Or are we just sitting here, on a couch in the school library on a Saturday evening, holding hands _as friends_?”

All this time, all the time since she became his friend, Brienne never dared to ask herself that question. Does she _like_ Jaime? She would have been terrified of saying yes, even just to herself. But if she had said no—it would have been a lie. So she just… didn’t ask.

But now, now she just nods again. She _does_ like him. Until she realises he asked two questions. She forces herself to look at him, look into his eyes. “Yes… to the first question.”

Jaime is breaking into a grin now, the stupidest, widest grin she’s ever seen on his face. It must be infectious, because he’s teasing her with, “I’ve never seen you smile that wide before.” And then, of course: “The blush is pretty standard though.”

“Shut up,” is all she can say.

_What a witty comeback, Brienne. You don’t deserve the door code to the library._

“How are you feeling now?” Jaime asks.

_Deliriously happy. _“I’m okay.”

“Are you ready to go?” Gods. _Prom._ Of course there’s still prom. She can hear the music sounding faintly from the school hall.

She’s trying to nod again, but she’s pretty sure she has a pained expression on her face.

“You’re a terrible liar, Brienne,” Jaime smiles. Again, there’s no hint of cruelty in his observation. Just—something like _affection_.

She sighs. “I really don’t want you to miss prom.”

Jaime shrugs. “And I don’t want you to _suffer_ through it.” He sinks further into the couch. “This is really quite comfortable. Do people study on these? I’d fall asleep in seconds.”

“It’s a prime spot, actually,” Brienne retorts. “Which you’d know if you had used this library for something other than _talking to Addam_.”

“We were whispering!”

“It was louder than _actual talking_, Jaime.”

Jaime just rolls his eyes at her. That’s supposed to be _Brienne’s_ move. She’s the eye roller in this—this—well, she supposes it’s no longer a friendship, as of three minutes ago.

They sit in silence for a little longer, still holding hands.

Eventually, Brienne asks, “So what happens now?”

Jaime doesn’t answer immediately. He lets go of her hand, shrugs off his suit jacket, loosens his tie. “We don’t go to prom, I guess.”

“Are you sure—”

“I’m _sure. _I’d rather be here with you.” He’s stretching his arm across her shoulders now. “In your _natural habitat_.”

“So we’re going to just sit here?”

“Well.” Jaime wraps his fingers around her upper arm. “There’s other things we can do.”

“Oh.” Brienne looks around at the shelves upon shelves of books. “Like… read?”

“Um.” Jaime seems almost caught off guard by her suggestion, but they’re in a library after all. What else is there to do in a library? “I suppose we _could_ read,” he accedes. “Or I could kiss you. If you want.”

Oh. That would be a misuse of the privilege of knowing the door code, wouldn’t it? But Brienne supposes it’s fine, when it’s just a Saturday evening. When it’s just the two of them. There are hundreds of other students, dancing and maybe even kissing too, in the school hall not too far away. It’s just the two of them, though, in this corner of the library.

She would have gone to prom with him, eventually. She would have done it for him. But then he offered to skip prom, _for her_.

So she lets him kiss her. She lets herself kiss him. After all of that—it’s the least she can do.


	30. “I’m with you, you know that.” (Office AU Part 9)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Um, hi. I somehow managed to burn out on Day 30 and then I lost momentum till today. BUT IT'S HERE. Office AU Part 9! I'm trying to expand Jaime's characterisation a little, thinking about how some of canon!Jaime's traits might transfer to Office!Jaime, in a way that might be slightly different from how he is usually written in a corporate context.
> 
> I'll post the last ficlet by tomorrow, then start reposting Office AU as a standalone on Monday. Aside from that, I'm devoting November to working on [The Assignment](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19711024). If you haven't given it a shot, I promise you that at its core, JB's relationship grows into something healthy and soft, amidst all the... murdering and sleeping with other people (which I don't describe in detail).
> 
> But anyway, I might push out a chapter or two of Office AU next month when I'm tired of writing about spies!

Back in the day—back in the days before Brienne—Jaime didn’t care very much if he had to work long hours. Or, perhaps it’s more accurate to say that however much he cared was irrelevant. There was always work to be done, regardless. Lannister Corp above all else—that is what Tywin Lannister always expected of his three children. Their immense wealth, their status, their privilege, that had all been handed to them. But they have always been expected to _work_. To excel at it.

In King’s Landing, it hadn’t been rare for Jaime to find himself in the office till eleven at night, or twelve, or one. He’d be there until whatever needed to get done got done, even while the letters on the page or screen swam and flipped before his eyes, more vigorously by the second. He’d spend evenings entertaining clients, weekends attending some event or conference or gala on behalf of the company. His holidays—well, if he went on vacation with his family, that was work enough in itself, even if it was just with Cersei, or with Tyrion. And that was besides the fact that the first thing he did in the morning, and the last thing he did at night, was reply to his work emails.

For all of the Lannisters—Tywin and his children, even his siblings and their children—this was just their way of life. Lannister Corp above all else.

There’s less to do in the Stormlands now—definitely less of the socialising, at least—but Jaime still does his work, and does it well. It’s what has always been expected of him, as a Lannister, even if he’s a Lannister who’s displaced himself from King’s Landing. In fact, he almost feels compelled to work even harder now, and with more focus, as if to prove that he didn’t come here to the Stormlands to work _less_. He doesn’t want control of the company, doesn’t want the power or responsibility that comes with it. But he’s not making that decision out of laziness or incompetence. If he works, then he is still _good_. He is still worth something. It’s the only way he’s known how to be worth something, in the eyes of his family.

So the first night he had made Brienne wait for him, Jaime didn’t think it would gnaw at him that much. He’s so used to it, the constant work. When he left the office, it wasn’t even _that_ late, only eight-thirty—alright, eight_ forty-five_ by the time he and Brienne sat down to dinner at his apartment. Still, Brienne herself must work later than that some days. She understands what it’s like, working for a company like Lannister Corp. What it’s like to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner at your office desk.

But for the next two days, Jaime couldn’t stop thinking about it—how Brienne had waited for him for almost three hours. He couldn’t stop thinking about how it was three hours he could have spent with her, even if it would have been in a cinema in the middle of nowhere, with both of them wearing trench coats and wigs and oversized glasses to avoid being recognised. And that was just one evening, not even three hours past the time she usually leaves work. How about those days he wants to see her—which is _every single day_—then finds he has to work till eleven at night, or twelve, or one? What happens then?

As far as Jaime was concerned, there was only one solution. Not to _stop_ working, no, he couldn’t possibly do _that_. He’d simply have to work somewhere where he could still spend time with Brienne—even if it was a matter of just being _beside_ her, while he worked. And it couldn’t be in the office, especially not before that two-month mark. In the office, there was never any logical reason for them to be in the same room.

(Well, there would be if people knew they were dating. But they don’t. They’re not supposed to for a few more weeks, at least.)

And so, Jaime began taking his work home. He always leaves the office at six now, except maybe on Mondays, when Brienne goes to the gym on her own. Brienne would spend the evening at his, at least until she needed to catch the train home, although she did hesitantly ask if she could leave a change of clothes at his apartment, just in case she ever had to stay over on a work night. (The answer was ‘yes’, of course.) For dinner, they’d get food delivered, or she would cook, or he would, if he needed a break and could afford one. Brienne often had work to do, too, and she’d sit opposite him at the dining table, her laptop across from his. In their silent concentration, the tapping of fingers on keyboards became its own form of dialogue.

This was the solution Jaime had settled on for now. If he had to be honest, though, it could get distracting, having her right there. Jaime found something quite mesmerising about Brienne looking all serious, although she had laughed in disbelief when he told her so. But it’s also kind of _nice_—not just that she _looks_ serious when she’s working, but that she _takes her work seriously_, in a way that feels qualitatively different from him, different from his family. Brienne doesn’t do it for power or recognition; she doesn’t do it because it’s Lannister Corp above all else. She was simply hired to do a job, and so she does it as well as she possibly can, which also happened to be better than is expected of her.

Naturally, they’d taken to discussing their work with each other, though Jaime often has to speak in vague terms or hypotheticals, tied up as his work usually is in some yet-to-be-made decision or other. Brienne asks him for his opinion on her own projects too, even argues with him about the best course of action. To her, the ‘best course of action’ is often the most _ethical _approach—whatever would benefit more people, and benefit them in the right way; or conversely, whatever hurt less for the least number of people. Jaime laughed at first—she is working for the largest, most profit-driven corporation in Westeros, and she wants to be _ethical_, of all things? But Brienne always tries, anyway, even though she is far from being in a position high enough to really have much of an influence. She just has this—this boundless urge to at least _try _to do the right thing.

(Jaime doesn’t think Brienne belongs in Lannister Corp, not forever. But for now, this is where she is, and where she’s planning to stay for at least a couple more years. He wouldn’t have met her otherwise, and he’s so very glad for it.)

They’re spending one of these evenings together now, two laptops at his dining table, empty takeout boxes stacked in the corner. He’s almost done—just looking over his notes for a breakfast meeting one final time—when he hears Brienne call his name.

“Jaime.”

“Hmm?” he replies, without looking up.

There’s a few seconds of silence, then— “Nothing.”

He lifts his head to see her staring at her own laptop intently. “Are you sure?”

“It’s fine. I’m just—” She meets his eyes for a second, then turns back to her laptop. “Never mind. Go back to work.”

“I’m pretty much done.” Jaime leans back in his chair and folds his arms. “And it’s not _nothing_ if you keep starting sentences without finishing them.”

“Okay then,” Brienne sighs, and closes her laptop. “We’re… together, right?”

Jaime feels his lips curling into a smile. “In the same plane of existence?” he says, offhandedly. “I would say so, or this is a very realistic dream.”

Brienne rolls her eyes, nudges his leg under the table with her foot. “You know what I mean. We’re together… exclusively. Right?”

“Yes, I believe we are. Unless you’ve been seeing other people.” He doesn’t _actually_ think that she’s been doing that, but since they’re on the topic, he might as well check.

“Oh, like I have options,” Brienne snorts.

Well, that wasn’t the response he expected. “So you _would_ see other people if you had options?”

She looks at him, eyes wide in alarm. “No! I didn’t mean to—would _you_?”

“No!” He nudges her leg with his foot now. “I’m with you, you know that.”

“I know. And I’m with you.” Brienne stands up out of her chair and grabs the takeout boxes. “Okay then. Just checking.” She walks towards his kitchen.

“That’s it?” he asks, from the dining table.

“That’s it,” she replies, and throws the boxes in the bin. “Just thought I’d check.”

Jaime leans forward, puts one elbow on the table so he can prop his chin up. “Huh.”

She looks over at him. “What?”

“You usually…” Jaime waves his hand in the air. “You know. Get in your own head about these things.”

“I do,” Brienne replies, and immediately turns to the sink to wash her hands.

He feels a smile coming on again, thinks of all the times over the past few days that he’s caught her looking at him oddly. Once she shuts off the tap, he says: “You’ve been trying to ask me that all week, haven’t you?”

She heaves a sigh, and leans against the counter. “I might have.”

“You thought I wouldn’t say yes?”

“No—it’s not that. I just felt like it was almost—unfair for me to ask. Since I was the one who wanted to keep this quiet.”

Jaime shrugs. “I agreed to the two months. It hasn’t been so bad.” Just three-and-a-half weeks left, if they’re counting from their first date.

“Still.” Brienne walks back over to him. “I know… you’d rather not.”

“Well.” He _would_ rather not, but there’s really not much more to say on the subject. He closes his own laptop and smiles up at her. “At least now I have confirmed my suspicions that I’m indeed in a monogamous relationship with Brienne Tarth.”

She giggles, a lovely sound. “I had similar suspicions about you, Jaime Lannister.” She comes to stand behind his chair and slips her hands over his shoulders, kneads her fingers into the knots there.

“And I suppose my brother did tell me that clarity is key,” Jaime muses.

Brienne’s fingers pause. “Your brother knows about us?”

_Oh, right._ Jaime never got around to telling her about Tyrion’s visit. “I may have—remember that Saturday that I said I was with a client? Before our first date?”

“… Oh.”

“Yeah.” He tilts his head back to find her gazing down at him. “My father sent him to convince me to return to King’s Landing, not that Tyrion bothered with that.” He leans his head back, so that the top of it touches her stomach. “Anyway, I might have told him that there was a reason why I wanted to stay here. In the Stormlands, specifically. He gave me some good advice.” _Aside from the part about eloping, obviously._

Brienne looks utterly bewildered. “_I’m _the reason you want to stay?”

Jaime laughs. “If you haven’t noticed, Brienne, we’ve been spending basically all our time together for the past month. You’ve been a very effective incentive, I would say.”

She removes her hands from his shoulders and sits herself in the chair beside him. “We’ve seen each other a lot, haven’t we?” she says, thoughtfully. “Marg says it’s a _lot_.”

“Is it?” He reaches over to grasp one of her hands. “Aren’t we just… spending time with each other because we want to?”

“I suppose. I’ve never—experienced this before. I don’t know what’s normal.”

“Me neither,” Jaime replies, without even thinking.

Brienne whips her head towards him. “What do you mean, _me neither_? Haven’t you dated before?”

“I… have. I just—I haven’t dated in the _normal_ way.” _Oh gods, here we go._ “My sister… she’d arrange for me to—to date women she thought were _appropriate_. I guess it started back when we were still in school. She’d say, _Jaime, wouldn’t you look good with so-and-so?_ And she’d set it up, and I’d say yes because… I don’t know why. Because I believed her, or wanted to please her. It was almost like—I felt like I had to be on the same page as her. And then it just kept happening—not that there were a lot of women. But each time it happened, I’d go through the motions, break it off eventually, sooner rather than later. I don’t even know if you could call any of them _relationships_, really.”

Jaime wills himself to look into Brienne’s eyes, steels himself for her judgment, finds nothing there but kindness. “I suppose… I fell into a pattern. And I didn’t know how to break out of that pattern.” He holds up their hands, just a little, nudges them towards Brienne. “Never met anyone that made me want to do that.”

Brienne gives him a smile; something quiet, nervous. “That’s… good to know.” Jaime feels her grip his hand a little tighter. “Will you tell me more about them?” she asks. “Your family?”

“I will. Eventually.” He’s given her bits and pieces over the past few weeks, but there’s always this lump in his throat that prevents him from telling her anything quite so substantial. “Not now. Is that okay?”

“That’s okay.”

They sit there in silence for a few more breaths. Then, Brienne says: “Speaking of—of patterns. I’ve been thinking about that. About us.”

Jaime shifts his chair a little towards her. “What about us?”

“I mean… When you stayed over the first time, I offered you the couch. Then I stayed over here, and I slept on the couch. And the other times since—that’s what we’ve done.” She clasps her free hand around his wrist. “I’m just wondering—we see each other so often—maybe we should… break the pattern.”

“Oh—”

“I’m not—I’m still not ready for—”

“I know.”

“But—I don’t want you to think I’d want to keep things this way, or anything like that. I just need to—work up to it. And I’d be… I’m okay with not doing the couch thing anymore.”

Jaime tries his best to stay calm. “Alright. Good.” _Really good._ “Will you—not do the couch thing tonight?”

Brienne reddens. “… I could.”

Jaime stands up then, a bit too abruptly, and he sees Brienne jerk back a little. “Well. I think you’ll find that my bed is very large and very comfortable.” He motions their hands towards the direction of his bedroom. “I’m sure it’d be very happy to accommodate us both.”

“Jaime,” she laughs, still seated in her chair, “it’s barely nine. We can’t go to bed _now_.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t think my body remembers how to fall asleep before eleven.”

“I didn’t say we had to _sleep_.”

Jaime sees Brienne stiffen at that, and he thinks that he’ll need to ask her to tell him more about her past too. “I don’t mean—not that,” he scrambles. “We can… talk. Or, you know. The stuff we’ve already done.”

_Stuff._ It’s a juvenile word, and he can imagine Tyrion giving him a look. But he supposes what they’ve done so far has been—innocent, in relative terms. Just kissing. And touching. And looking. It’s chaste, compared to—but it’s also _not_. Not in the way his lips travel down her neck, the way her hands slip beneath his shirt, the way their exhalations mingle. It’s all he can think of right now, all he wants to do for the rest of the evening. Especially if they finally get to do all that in his _bed_, and then stay there after.

Especially if he gets to wake up beside Brienne in the morning, and do that _stuff_ all over again.

So Jaime tugs on her hand again, in the direction of the bedroom. Brienne stands slowly, and he searches her face, her body for any sign of reluctance. She’s tentative, but no, he doesn’t think it’s reluctance. At most, it’s an anticipation that she’s taught herself to suppress. She does that thing she likes—wraps her hand around his forearm—which is always a good sign, from what he’s gathered.

Then, for the first time in four-and-a-half weeks, Brienne follows him to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, look how much closer I am to writing smut for them~


	31. “Scared, me?” (Modern AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS IT. The final one! I'm bringing things full circle with a sequel to the ficlet from [Day 1](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20848634/chapters/49559306).

Brienne has jumped off this cliff into the water below many times in her life. She knows exactly what to expect each time: jump, sink, surface, breathe, swim to the shore, all in that order. But this time, when she surfaces, she finds that she is searching for much more than air. She is searching for _answers._

Jaime, the source of those answers, emerges from the water just moments after her. “Seven hells, we’re alive,” he gasps, as he catches his breath.

“What did you say?” Brienne calls out to him. She can feel a tremble in her limbs as she treads water.

“We’re alive!” he laughs, swimming towards her.

“No—on the way down! What were you shouting at me on the way down?”

His eyes widen for a split second, then he turns away from her to float on his back. “Nothing,” he says, looking at the sky.

Brienne moves over to him, close as she can. “You said something, Jaime.”

“It was nothing,” he insists.

“It wasn’t _nothing_. It sounded like ‘I love—’”

Jaime comes vertical again, so abruptly that he manages to splash water all over her in the process. _Infuriating man._ “It was stupid,” he sulks. “Forget I said it.”

Brienne slicks her wet hair back and sighs. “If you think it’s so stupid, why the hells did you say it in the first place?”

He looks her in the eye. “I just—I thought we were going to _die_, okay? And I wanted to tell you before we died. But we didn’t, so. So it’s fine.” He looks away again.

“So you didn’t mean it?”

“It’s not that I—” He closes his eyes and takes a breath. “I wouldn’t have said it if we weren’t under, you know, threat of death.”

Brienne feels a sting at his words, a listing towards that familiar feeling of rejection, a temptation to drop the subject altogether. She swallows them all. She just jumped off a _cliff_, for Seven’s sake, and there’s adrenaline pumping through her veins. “You can’t say it under—under _normal_ circumstances?” she bites back, her voice saturated with accusation. “What are you—scared?”

Jaime stares, stunned for a couple of seconds, then narrows his eyes at her. “Scared? Me? You’re the one that keeps avoiding talking about the kiss!”

“I thought you only kissed me because you were drunk!” _Hells, why are they having this conversation while treading water?_

Jaime pushes a finger into her shoulder. “I thought _you_ only kissed _me_ because _you_ were drunk! But whenever I want to ask you about it you just—avoid it altogether!”

“You’ve _barely _tried, Jaime,” she responds defensively. That wasn’t all true. He _has _tried. She’s just been very good at changing the subject before he could even get the words out of his mouth.

“I was going to—I was going to tell you _tonight_, okay?” he laments. “I was going to tell you that I _like_ you a lot, would you consider maybe being my girlfriend, and so on. But we were about to jump off a cliff and I panicked—”

“We were _not_ going to die, Jaime.” She’s changing the subject again, she knows. “I told you I’ve done this countless times.”

“People can still die doing the things they’ve done countless times!”

Brienne lets out a groan and swallows a mouthful of water in the process. “Can we please swim to shore first before we continue this?” she spits.

“Fine!”

When they’re on the shore, both aggressively towelling themselves dry, Brienne tells herself to just—just face it. Just ask him. “So did you mean what you said or not?” she demands, wrapping her towel around her shoulders.

“Yes!”

“Okay!”

“Do you want me to mean it?” It’s Jaime’s turn to demand an answer now, and he’s gesturing his towel wildly at her.

“Yes!”

“Okay! Do you love _me_?”

“I don’t know!” There’s too much _shouting_, and _towels_, and this is all _moving very quickly_. “I only just got around to admitting to myself that I _like_ you!”

“That’s fine! I can live with that!”

“Okay!”

“So are you my girlfriend now?”

“I guess so!”

“Can I kiss you then?”

“No!”

“Why the hells not?!”

“I’m mad at you and I don’t want our first kiss as an actual couple to be when I’m mad at you!”

“Fine! When do you think you’ll stop being mad?”

“I don’t know! In an hour?!”

“Okay!” Jaime looks at his watch, then back up at her. “One hour!” And then he storms off. In the wrong direction.

“Wrong way, you idiot!”

Jaime turns around and marches back toward her. He’s coming closer, and closer, and he brings his nose right up to hers:

“One hour,” he says, his voice just low enough to make her blush instantly. But Brienne doesn’t move a hair. She steels herself against his proximity, lets their noses touch.

“One hour,” she agrees, defiantly.

And then she kisses him anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading, and for all your comments and kudos this past month :) Office AU will be reposted on its own from tomorrow! I've already made a banner for it, and it's... something alright.


End file.
